THE  SOUL  OF  ULSTER 

ERNEST  W  HAMILTON 


Q, 


The  Soul  of  Ulster 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


The  First  Seven 
Divisions 

A  detailed  and  authori- 
tative account  of  the  part 
taken  by  the  British  army 
in  the  fighting  from  Mons 
to^Ypres.  It  is  the  splen- 
did epitaph  of  England's 
professional  army,  which 
at  the  end  of  the  three 
months  was  practically 
annihilated. 


With  Maps.       ::      $1.50  Net. 


The  Soul  of  Ulster 

By  Ernest  W.  Hamilton,  <Author 

of  "The  First  Seven  ^visions."  ::     ::     :: 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  CO. 

681  FIFTH  cAVENUE 


COPYRIGHT.   1917, 

BY  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  CO. 


printed  in  the  Chitted  States  of  Hmerica 


PREFACE 

IT  has  been  very  truly  said  that  the  Ulster  question 
is  only  properly  understood  by  Ulstermen,  residents 
in  other  parts  of  Ireland  having,  at  the  best,  an 
incomplete  grasp  of  the  real  deep-down  issues.  It 
may,  I  think,  with  equal  truth  be  added  that  mere 
residence  in  Ulster  is  not  in  itself  sufficient  to  lay 
bare  the  inner  soul  of  the  people,  there  being — in 
the  case  of  the  native  part  of  the  population — a  very 
wide  gap  between  their  secret  feelings  and  that  which 
appears  on  the  surface.  In  moments  of  acute  political 
interest  this  gap  becomes  sensibly  lessened. 

North  Tyrone  has  been  the  scene — since  the  Re- 
distribution Bill — of  more  closely-contested  elections 
than  any  other  Constituency  in  the  kingdom;  and  as 
one  who  has  taken  an  active  part — as  principal  or 
otherwise — in  all  of  these  contests,  I  have  perhaps 
had  exceptional  opportunities  of  getting  occasional 
rather  startling  glimpses  of  the  real  soul  of  Ulster. 

ERNEST  HAMILTON, 

M.P.  for  North  Tyrone, 
1885-1892. 


2061346 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ULSTER  PRIOR  TO  COLONIZATION      ...  1 

THE  ULSTER  PLANTATION 19 

THE  CROMWELLIAN  SETTLEMENT     ...  55 

THE  CIVIL  WAR 73 

THE  1798  REBELLION 89 

ULSTER  TO-DAY 107 

MOONLIGHT  OUTRAGES 141 

THE  RED  HAND  OF  ULSTER      ....  153 

CONCLUSION.  177 


ULSTER  PRIOR  TO  COLONIZATION 


fTlHE  ethics  of  the  Ulster  question 
•••  are  fast  bound  up  in  the  general 
ethics  of  colonization.  Is  colonization  to 
be  classed  as  an  act  of  piracy,  or  is  it  a 
necessary  part  of  the  gradual  reclamation 
of  the  world?  It  may  be  both,  in  which 
case  the  problem  is  still  further  resolved 
into  the  question  as  to  whether  the  good 
resulting  from  colonization  justifies  the 
original  act?  Most  people  will  agree  that 
the  answer  must  depend  upon  the  parti- 
cular circumstances  surrounding  each  case. 
A  broad,  general  principle  which  will 
govern  all  cases  seems  out  of  reach. 


4  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Religion  is  perhaps  the  most  attractive 
excuse,  because  all  proselytizers,  if  sincere 
in  the  belief  that  their  particular  gospel 
alone  carries  the  secret  of  salvation,  must 
equally  believe  that  the  end  justifies  the 
means.  It  is  a  logical  sequence.  And  so 
it  comes  about  that  most  of  history's 
blackest  or  reddest  acts  bear  the  official 
stamp  of  God's  service. 

In  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  North 
America  the  Gospel  has  succeeded  more 
primitive  creeds,  and  we  therefore  comfort 
ourselves  with  the  reflection  that  all  is 
well,  including  the  unpublished  and,  in 
many  cases,  unpublishable,  processes  by 
which  this  came  about.  Into  these  pro- 
cesses few  care  to  inquire,  but  we  find 
that  the  net  result  in  every  case  is  a 
steady  disappearance  of  the  native 
element.  This  one  concrete  fact  is  in 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization  5 

itself  perhaps  more  eloquent  than  any 
history.  It  seems  to  point  with  some 
plainness  to  the  conclusion  that  the  land 
and  not  the  souls  of  the  natives  was  the 
first  aim  of  the  colonists,  or,  in  any  case, 
that,  if  the  salvation  of  their  souls  was 
secured,  it  was  done  by  the  convenient 
sacrifice  of  their  bodies. 

In  a  world  whose  most  unpopular 
product  is  the  naked  truth,  we  need  never 
expect  the  picture  of  British  colonization 
the  world  over  to  be  faithfully  drawn. 
It  would,  perhaps,  not  be  a  pretty  picture. 
But,  ugly  as  it  might  be  in  its  truth,  it 
would  still  fail  to  suggest — even  to  the 
most  philanthropic — any  obvious  and  at 
the  same  time  practicable  act  of  repara- 
tion. The  philanthropist  might  deplore 
the  wicked  acts  of  other  days,  but  he  could 
not  undo  them;  he  could  not  even 


6  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

neutralize  them;  and  however  sincere  his 
philanthropy,  he  would  hardly — even  if 
he  could — reconstitute  the  anti-coloniza- 
tion conditions. 

It  can  safely  be  said  that  no  coloni- 
zation scheme  has  ever  been  more  abun- 
dantly justified,  both  by  antecedent 
conditions  and  by  results,  than  has  that 
of  Ulster  by  James  I.  of  England.  The 
antecedent  conditions  were,  in  fact,  very 
bad,  and  even  apologetic  ingenuity  could 
hardly  argue  that  the  fault  lay  at  the  door 
of  the  English.  If  ever  a  province  of 
Ireland  enjoyed  Home  Rule,  that  province 
was  Ulster  prior  to  the  Great  Plantation 
of  1609.  The  population  was  almost  ex- 
clusively native.  The  stream  of  English 
undertakers  and  adventurers  which  for 
centuries  had  been  attracted  by  the  rich 
pastures  of  Munster  and  Leinster,  found 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization  7 

no  similar  attraction  in  the  barren  bogs 
of  the  cold  northern  Province.  Ulster 
had  been  left  severely  alone.  It  had  a 
poor  soil,  a  cold  climate,  a  savage  popula- 
tion, and  it  was  dangerously  remote  from 
the  Pale,  and  all  the  official  protection 
afforded  by  the  armed  forces  of  that 
British  oasis. 

In  Antrim  there  was,  during  the  latter 
half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  a  certain 
sprinkling  of  Scotch  Campbells  and 
McDonnels,  but  these  formed  a  migratory 
population,  coming  and  going  as  oppor- 
tunity for  fighting  arose.  Down  and 
Armagh  could  also  boast  a  handful  of 
English  settlers,  eking  out  a  struggling 
and  miserable  existence  by  their  own 
labour  on  boycotted  lands  subject  at  all 
times  to  forays  and  rapine. 

Outside    of    the    three    eastern    counties 


8  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

there  were  no  agricultural  settlers,  and 
the  native  Irish  could  rule  and  be  ruled 
as  they  wished.  Taking  it  from  shore  to 
shore,  Ulster  was  incomparably  the  most 
Irish  of  the  four  Provinces,  and  it  was 
reigned  over  by  the  O'Neills,  of  whom 
the  most  interesting  historically  was 
Shane.  Shane  in  his  day  styled  him- 
self King  of  Ulster,  and  in  truth  he 
had  some  claim  to  this  title.  O'Reilly, 
O'Hanlon  and  O'Kane  admitted  his 
sovereignty;  O'Donnell  and  Maguire  at 
times  disputed  it  and  suffered  accordingly. 
Shane  was  nothing  but  a  coarse  and 
common  savage.  He  would  seem  to  have 
had  no  virtues  and  all  the  vices.  To 
secure  his  succession,  he  murdered  his 
nearest  relative.  O'Donnell  accused  him 
in  1564  of  having  caused  the  death  of 
500  persons  of  quality,  and  of  at  least 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization  9 

14,000  of  the  poor.  On  one  occasion,  in 
1562,  he  had  a  difference  of  opinion  with 
Maguire,  to  settle  which  he  fell  upon  that 
chieftain's  harvest  people  at  Belleek  and 
killed  300  men,  women  and  children.  He 
was  inordinately  and  grotesquely  vain, 
especially  of  his  least  commendable 
exploits. 

As  may  well  be  supposed,  the  vices  of 
Shane  were  not  confined  to  the  walls  of 
his  own  castle  at  Dungannon.  They 
appear  to  have  been  common  to  the 
whole  province.  Fitzwilliam,  writing  to 
Cecil  towards  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign, 
complained  that  he  was  "a  banished 
man  wearing  himself  out  among  unkind 
people — a  people  most  accursed,  who 
lusted  after  every  sin.  Murder  and  incest 
were  every-day  matters,  and  a  lying 
spirit  brooded  over  all  the  land."  Sidney, 


10  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

writing  to  the  Queen  herself,  in  1567, 
says:  "Surely  there  was  never  people 
of  worse  minds,  for  matrimony  is  no 
more  regarded  in  effect  than  conjunction 
between  unreasoning  beasts.  Perjury, 
murder  and  robbery  counted  allowable. 
Finally,  I  cannot  find  that  they  make  any 
conscience  of  sin." 

Not  only  was  Ulster  the  worst  of  the 
Provinces  socially  and  morally,  but  it 
was  by  far  the  most  backward  in  industrial 
enterprise.  There  was  but  little  tillage 
and  no  settled  industries.  Herds  of  cattle 
formed  the  chief  means  of  subsistence, 
and  these  changed  hands  with  uncomfort- 
able frequency  and  to  the  usual  accom- 
paniment of  murder  and  outrage.  Might 
was  the  only  right.  The  rich  system- 
atically oppressed  the  poor,  and  the  lot  of 
the  lower  orders  was  miserable  indeed. 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization         11 

There  was  no  law  but  the  old  Brehon  law 
which  invariably  found  a  verdict  for  the 
richer  and  the  stronger.  Virtues  were 
not  accounted  as  such.  The  standard  of 
morality  was  set  by  wandering  bards 
known  as  Rhymers,  whose  panegyrics 
extolled  not  nobility  of  thought  and 
action,  "but  the  most  beastliest  and 
odious  parts  of  men's  doings,  and  their 
own  likewise  for  whom  the  rhymes  be 
made.  Such  be  cherished,  defended,  and 
rewarded  with  garments  till  they  leave 
themselves  naked."  * 

The  above  occasional  glimpses  of  a 
Pan-Celtic  Ulster  under  its  own  chieftains 
are  not  furnished  as  a  suggestion  of  what 
might  recur  under  Home  Rule,  but 
simply  as  a  justification  of  the  initial  act 
of  colonization.  Where  such  was  the 

•Fitzwilliam   to    Elizabeth. 


12  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

state  of  society,  it  was  clear  that  a  remedy 
of  some  sort  was  called  for,  not  in  the 
interests  of  England  but  in  the  interests 
of  Ulster  itself.  Coercion  and  instruction 
were  alike  failures  as  instruments  of 
reform;  only  the  example  of  a  more 
advanced  civilization  working  in  their 
midst  could  be  expected  to  open  the  eyes 
of  the  natives  to  the  higher  possibilities 
of  existence. 

At  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
English  and  Irish  had  been  in  more  or 
less  close  touch  for  over  four  hundred 
years;  but  though,  during  that  period, 
England  had  advanced  to  a  comparatively 
high  state  of  civilization,  Ireland  had 
remained  stationary.  The  contemporaries 
in  Ireland  of  Shakespeare  were  the 
Rhymers  extolling  in  verse,  which  merci- 
fully has  not  survived,  "The  beastliest 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization         13 

and  most  odious  parts  of  men's  doings." 
Century  after  century  had  passed  without 
Ireland  registering  even  a  fractional 
advance  in  manners  or  culture.  It  sys- 
tematically resented  all  attempts  to  raise 
it  out  of  the  mire.  In  that  mire  it  had 
lived  from  the  back  of  history,  and  in 
that  mire  it  was  content  and,  indeed, 
determined  to  remain.  Settled  laws, 
settled  industries  were  beyond  its  under- 
standing, and  like  all  aboriginal  countries, 
it  resented  what  it  could  not  understand. 

The  bane  of  the  country  had  always 
been  its  geographical  position.  It  lay  on 
the  very  western  limit  of  the  world — an 
inaccessible  island  to  which  the  enlighten- 
ment born  of  the  interchange  of  ideas 
between  nations  could  never  penetrate 
except  by  hearsay.  It  was  outside  the 
radius  of  first-hand  social  and  moral 


14  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

evolution,  and  the  imported  article  it 
invariably  regarded  with  suspicion. 

The  gradual  elevation  of  thought  which 
has  reclaimed  Europe  from  the  savagery 
of  the  dark  ages  can  be  traced  by  the 
student  of  history  to  periodical  crusades 
started  here  and  there  against  existing 
practices.  The  original  crusade  may  be, 
and  generally  is,  the  work  of  one  man, 
but  the  work  which  he  has  started  is 
carried  on  after  his  death  by  sects  or 
societies  of  which  he  remains  the  inspira- 
tion. The  new  ideas  gradually  take  hold, 
and  so  the  world  advances,  each  country 
in  turn  assimilating  the  reforms  of  its 
neighbour. 

An  isolated  country  is  naturally 
debarred  from  participation  in  such 
advance,  but  it  remains  happily  (or 
unhappily)  unconscious  of  its  stagnation, 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization         15 

through  lack  of  opportunity  for  comparing 
itself  with  others.  Not  only  this,  but  in 
the  absence  of  a  wholesome  standard  of 
comparison,  it  readily  falls  into  the  error 
of  over-estimating  its  own  merits  and 
importance  in  the  world.  It  becomes  the 
victim  of  megalomania.  This  would  be 
a  harmless  vanity  enough,  did  it  not 
inevitably  carry  with  it  the  absence  of 
effort  or  even  of  desire  to  improve.  When 
a  country  is  not  only  ignorant  but  also 
incredulous  of  its  own  relative  inferiority, 
that  country  is  doomed  by  the  gods  to 
destruction.  England  herself  has  suffered 
much  from  this  common  hallucination  of 
the  insular;  Ireland  far  more  so.  There 
has  been  no  real  eradication  of  primitive 
impulses.  Behind  a  ready  but  thin 
assumption  of  agreement  with  imported 
ideas,  the  basic  nature  of  the  native  Irish 


16  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Celt  remains  to-day  the  same  as  it  was 
in  the  days  of  Elizabeth;  the  same  as  it 
was  in  the  days  of  Strongbow,  and  pro- 
bably very  much  the  same  as  it  was  in 
the  days  of  Noah.  The  progressive  views 
of  the  idealist  will  be  glibly  applauded, 
but  they  make  no  more  lasting  impression 
than  a  rainbow.  It  is  mainly  owing  to 
this  barrier  between  them  and  all  recog- 
nized forms  of  thought  that  the  Irish  are 
so  proverbially  apt  to  mistake  their  best 
friends  for  their  foes,  and  their  worst 
foes  for  their  friends. 

The  peculiarities  of  the  native  Irish 
character  were — even  in  the  days  of 
Elizabeth — thoroughly  understood  by 
those  on  the  spot,  but  not  so  by  the 
politicians  at  home — an  anomaly  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  sixteenth  century; 
and  as  the  politicians  always  held  the 


Ulster  Prior  to  Colonization          17 

purse-strings,  and  always  knew  better 
than  the  administrator,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  heart,  health  and  fortune  of  the 
latter  unhappy  functionary  usually  ended 
by  being  broken. 

After  Shane's  death,  Essex  was 
appointed  Governor  of  Ulster.  His  ad- 
ministration was  not  a  success.  He  was 
supplied  with  a  mere  handful  of  soldiers, 
underpaid  and  underfed,  and  the  chieftains 
could  afford  to  laugh  at  him.  His  term 
of  office  was  marred  by  one  or  two  acts  of 
flagrant  treachery  which  even  the  excuse 
of  retaliation  could  not  justify. 

Essex's  armed  incursions  were  directed 
no  less  against  the  Antrim  Scotch  than 
against  the  Irish.  These  Scotch  were  not 
colonists  in  the  ordinary  sense;  they 
were  mercenary  soldiers  whom  the  Irish 
chiefs  employed  to  fight  their  inter-tribal 


18  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

battles  for  them.  Their  fighting  reputa- 
tion was  great,  and  they  would  do  battle 
for  anyone  who  paid  them.  Sir  Francis 
Knollys  reckoned  in  1566  that  100  of 
the  Scots  were  more  formidable  as  foes 
than  200  of  the  Irish.  In  any  case,  they 
were  more  than  a  match  for  Essex,  and 
he  made  no  headway  against  them.  He 
finally  died  in  Dublin  in  1576,  a  broken 
and  disappointed  man. 


THE  ULSTER  PLANTATION 


r  1 1  HE  end  of  the  sixteenth  century 
•*•  saw  O'Neill  and  O'Donnell  joining 
hands  in  a  fresh  endeavour  to  extend 
their  own  rule  even  beyond  the  bounds 
of  Ulster.  In  September,  1601,  6,000 
Spanish  troops  landed  at  Kinsale,  and 
with  these  the  two  northern  Chiefs,  after 
a  devastating  march  through  Ireland, 
managed  to  join  forces.  Mount  joy,  how- 
ever, who  had  succeeded  the  second  Essex 
as  Deputy,  collected  an  army  and  very 
easily  defeated  the  combined  forces,  who 
were  seized  with  an  unaccountable  panic. 
The  Spaniards — who,  according  to  the 
historian,  were  not  such  fast  runners  as 
the  Irish — had  to  bear  the  brunt  of  the 
pursuit  and  many  fell.  The  total  casualties 
21 


22  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

on  the  English  side  were  one  man  killed. 
O'Neill  himself,  seeing  the  game  was  up, 
shortly  afterwards  presented  himself  before 
Mount  joy,  and  on  his  knees  swore  eternal 
loyalty. 

This  rebellion  may  be  written  down  as 
the  direct  cause  of  the  Ulster  Plantation. 
O'Neill  and  O'Donnell  left  the  country 
and  their  lands  were  confiscated.  The 
Four  Masters  record  the  circumstance  as 
follows:  "It  was  from  this  rising  and 
from  the  departure  of  the  Earls  that 
their  principalities,  their  territories,  their 
estates,  their  lands,  their  forts,  their 
fruitful  harbours,  and  their  fishful  bays 
were  taken  from  the  Irish  of  the  province 
of  Ulster,  and  were  given  in  their  presence 
to  foreign  tribes;  and  they  were  expelled 
and  banished  into  other  countries,  where 
most  of  them  died." 


The  Ulster  Plantation  23 

In  these  few  words  is  recorded  Ireland's 
great  grievance.  The  "foreign  tribes" 
were  the  Ulster  Protestants,  and  they  were 
introduced  on  to  the  scene  as  follows. 

James  VI.  of  Scotland  succeeded  to  the 
English  throne  upon  the  death  of  Eliza- 
beth in  March,  1603.  The  immediate 
effect  of  his  accession  was  that  England^ 
and  Scotland  now  for  the  first  time  be- 
came united  under  one  sovereign.  The 
Scots  became  "Britons,"  *  fellow  members 
with  the  English  of  the  joint  kingdom; 
and  to  the  astute  mind  of  James  the  idea 
presented  itself  of  utilizing  these  new 
recruits  to  the  national  flag  for  purposes 
of  still  further  consolidating  the  United 
Kingdom. 

James  conceived  the  idea  of  the  Planta- 
tion of  O'Neill's  and  O'Donnell's  forfeited 

*The   actual    title    was    not    established    till    1701. 


24  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

lands  with  a  colony  of  British.  This 
much-abused  monarch,  who  certainly 
managed  to  get  the  wrong  side  of  con- 
temporary historians — possibly  by  out- 
manoeuvring them  in  debate — could  at 
least  boast  an  active,  if  not  always  a 
tactful,  brain.  He  was  a  thinker  and  a 
man  of  ideas,  some  of  which  were  good 
and  some  bad,  a  phenomenon  not  wholly 
confined  to  the  first  of  the  English  Stuarts. 
The  Ulster  Plantation  idea  was,  when  all 
is  said  and  done,  a  good  one,  and  based 
on  those  purely  logical  deductions  on 
which  James  so  greatly  prided  himself. 
He  saw  a  land,  by  no  means  evilly  used  by 
nature,  which  from  time  immemorial  had 
been  a  by-word — a  country  torn  by  in- 
ternal strife,  saturated  with  its  own  blood 
shed  by  itself,  idle,  ragged  and  wretched. 
It  was  fairly  arguable  that  such  a  state 


The  Ulster  Plantation  25 

of  things,  being  chronic  and  having  suc- 
cessfully survived  all  remedies  prescribed, 
might  be  due  not  to  the  malevolence  of 
fate,  or  to  the  incompetence  of  the  English 
Government,  but  to  the  inherent  qualities 
of  the  natives  themselves,  to  whom  every 
form  of  restraint  and  every  form  of 
settled  industry  seemed  intolerable.  From 
this  it  was  but  a  step  to  the  natural 
corollary  that  the  remedy  lay  in  the 
introduction  of  a  more  solid  and  stable 
race. 

The  idea  so  far  could  hardly  claim  the 
merit  of  originality.  It  had  indeed  been 
tried  in  Ireland  with  unvarying  non- 
success  for  four  hundred  years.  The  Pale 
was  the  brightest  example  of  the  system's 
workings,  and  the  condition  of  that 
uneasy  settlement  was  riot  an  entirely 
happy  augury  for  the  success  of  similar 


26  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

ventures.  The  other  planted  areas  in 
Munster  and  Leinster  stood  out  as  colossal 
monuments  of  failure,  sufficient  to  damp 
the  enterprise  even  of  the  most  logical  of 
monarchs.  James'  logic,  however,  had 
an  eminently  practical  side.  The  mere 
fact  of  failure  was  not  enough  for  him. 
Like  Aristotle,  he  burrowed  below  the 
surface  for  causes — material  or  efficient. 
Both  seemed  to  be  found  in  one  salient 
fact.  '  Many  of  the  earlier  settlers  had 
come  to  Ireland  without  their  women- 
folk, had  married  with  the  natives,  re- 
married in  the  second  generation,  and  in 
the  third  had  lost  their  identity  and 
become  merged  in  the  hybrid  mass  of 
Anglo-Norman-Irish,  and  Anglo-Irish, 
which  so  successfully  added  to  the  con- 
fusion and  unrest  of  central  and  southern 
Ireland.  In  the  case  of  some  of  the 


The  Ulster  Plantation  27 

earlier  settlers,  this  absorption  was 
thorough  and  complete.  Here  there  had 
been  no  religious  barrier.  The  settlers — 
mostly  men  of  ill-defined  principles — 
quickly  assimilated  the  native  habits, 
adopted  native  views,  and  even  native 
names,  and  became — in  the  words  of  the 
contemporary  historian — more  Irish  than 
the  Irish  themselves. 

With  the  later  settlers  the  process  was 
less  thorough.  These  came  over  as  Pro- 
testants, recent  converts  to  whom  the 
old  faith  was  anathema,  and,  through  all 
the  mixed-up  jumble  of  subsequent  cen- 
turies, they  retained  their  distinctive 
religion  and  their  distinctive  Anglo-Nor- 
man names.  In  many  cases,  however, 
the  distinctive  English  characteristics  of 
this  secondary  tide  of  settlers  had  under- 
gone marked  changes.  They  were  few 


28  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

and  the  natives  were  many,  and,  on  the 
principle  that  it  is  easier  to  go  down  hill 
than  up,  they  followed  the  line  of  least 
resistance  and  absorbed  many  of  the 
manners  and  customs  of  those  whom  their 
ostensible  mission  was  to  elevate. 

James  reviewed  these  former  failures 
with  an  analytical  eye.  Why  had  they 
failed?  What  was  the  cause?  The  im- 
mediate cause  was  very  obviously  that, 
instead  of  the  settlers  pushing  the  mass  of 
natives  up  the  hill  of  good  behaviour,  the 
mass  of  natives  had  pushed  them  down. 
But  it  was  clear  that  a  remedy  must  be 
looked  for  in  the  discovery  of  more  remote 
causes  than  these.  To  the  mind  of  James, 
it  seemed  (1),  that  the  earlier  settlers  had 
been  too  few  in  number;  (2),  that  their 
lack  of  their  own  women-folk  spelt  certain 
disaster;  (3),  that  they  had  been  of  the 


The  Ulster  Plantation  29 

wrong  class.  The  first  two  of  these  pro- 
positions were  fairly  obvious.  The  dis- 
covery of  the  third  gave  evidence  of  more 
acumen.  The  Munster  and  Leinster 
settlers  had  been  mere  needy  adventurers, 
broken  men  for  the  most  part,  or  ne'er- 
do-wells  of  good  family,  who  embarked  on 
the  Irish  undertaking  with  the  avowed 
intention  of  making  all  they  could  out  of 
it  by  fair  means  or  foul ;  as  a  rule  the  means 
were  foul.  Agricultural  and  industrial 
stability  could  never  grow  out  of  such 
seed.  So  thought  James.  For  the  suc- 
cess of  his  Ulster  scheme  a  more  sub- 
stantial strain  was  called  for,  and,  by  the 
ordination  of  fate,  one  lay  ready  to  his 
hand. 

Throughout  the  reigns  of  Henry  VIII., 
Mary,  and  Elizabeth,  the  Border  Counties 
of  Dumfriesshire,  Roxburghshire,  Cumber- 


30  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

land  and  Northumberland  had  been  a 
cause  of  unceasing  trouble  to  the  two 
kingdoms,  the  jurisdiction  of  which  both 
sides  of  the  Border  repudiated  in  favour 
of  a  more  congenial  code  of  their  own. 
Internal  and  interminable  feuds,  between 
the  representatives  of  England  on  the  one 
side  and  Scotland  on  the  other,  had  kept 
the  Middle  and  Western  Marches  in  a 
state  of  ceaseless  broil  for  close  on  a  cen- 
tury. The  Wardens  were  either  powerless 
to  interfere  or  were  themselves  impli- 
cated. With  the  Union  of  the  two  king- 
doms under  James,  it  was  clearly  desir- 
able that  these  border  raids  and  forays 
should  cease;  but  they  did  not  cease. 
The  county  boundaries  still  remained,  and 
to  the  Border  mind  these  county  boun- 
daries offered  every  justification  for  a 
continuance  of  the  enjoyable  traditional 


The  Ulster  Plantation  31 

feuds.  The  technical  union  of  the  two 
countries  meant  nothing  to  them. 

To  James,  newly  installed  on  his  English 
throne,  came  the  great  idea  of  quieting 
the  unruly  Border  country  and  colonizing 
Ulster  with  one  and  the  same  stroke. 
It  was  true  that  at  first  sight  the  Borderers 
appeared  to  be  little  less  lawless  and  un- 
ruly than  the  Ulster  natives  whom  they 
were  to  replace,  or  rather  to  reform  by 
their  example;  but  a  closer  examination 
showed  up  very  marked  differences,  and 
differences  which  pointed  to  James'  plan 
being  less  of  a  wild-cat  scheme,  when 
analysed,  than  appeared  on  -the  sur- 
face. 

The  Borderers  were  lawless  and  unruly 
from  the  national  point  of  view,  but  from 
their  own  point  of  view  they  were  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other.  All  their  actions 


32  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

were  governed  by  a  rigid  code,  the  viola- 
tion of  which  carried  with  it  disgrace  worse 
than  death,  and  the  violation  of  which  was, 
as  a  consequence,  extremely  rare.  They 
could  also  boast  some  fine  sterling  quali- 
ties which,  at  that  time,  were  certainly 
strange  to  the  land  of  their  prospective 
adoption.  Their  word,  once  given,  was 
binding  even  to  death.  A  broken  word  was 
a  crime  blacker  than  murder.  To  such  an 
extent  was  this  reverence  for  the  sanctity 
of  a  promise  carried  that  even  a  prisoner 
going  to  execution  was  not  bound,  when 
he  had  once  passed  his  word.  Treachery 
of  any  and  every  kind  was  looked 
upon  with  unspeakable  abhorrence.  They 
were  brave,  too,  these  Borderers,  with  a 
dogged,  resolute  bravery  that  was  equally 
a  part  of  their  code,  and  they  had  a  strong 
sense  of  justice  which  was  superior  to  the 


The  Ulster  Plantation  33 

rancour  even  of  the  bitterest  blood  feuds. 
They  were  exclusively  Protestant. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that 
here,  at  any  rate,  was  a  race  endowed 
with  many  of  the  essentials  for  successful 
colonization.  It  was  argued,  with  some 
show  of  reason,  that  their  international 
feuds — which  were  mainly  a  matter  of 
tradition  and  of  geography  (the  English 
and  Scotch  Borderers  being  of  identical 
race) — would  abruptly  die  out  amidst  new 
surroundings,  and  that  their  common 
interests  would  weld  them  into  solid  union. 

In  1609  the  work  of  deportation  started 
and  continued  for  several  years.  Arm- 
strongs, Elliots,  Johnstones,  Pattersons, 
Watsons,  Thompsons,  Riddles,  Littles, 
Scotts,  Bells,  Turnbulls,  Pringles,  Rout- 
ledges,  Andersons,  Blacks,  Bairds,  Nixons, 
Dicksons,  Crosiers,  Rutherfords,  Beatties 


34  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

and  a  host  of  other  Border  clans  crossed 
the  seas,  with  their  wives  and  families, 
and  turned  their  backs  for  good  and  all 
on  the  land  of  their  birth.  So  was  carried 
out  the  great  Ulster  Plantation.  There 
was  no  armed  opposition;  the  natives 
withdrew  into  the  mountain  districts,  and 
the  colonists  settled  down  on  the  granted 
lands.  They  increased  and  multiplied; 
they  utilized  the  water-power  for  factories; 
they  reclaimed  the  bogs  and  tilled  the  land 
so  gained.  All  went  well  in  the  planted 
districts.  Peace  and  prosperity  took  the 
place  of  rapine  and  misery,  and  before  the 
first  quarter  of  the  Seventeenth  Century 
was  passed  the  justification  of  the  Ulster 
Plantation  seemed  beyond  dispute. 


The  Ulster  Plantation  85 

1641 

Thirty-two  years  had  passed  since  the 
first  batch  of  British  colonists  had 
landed  in  Ulster.  A  second  generation 
of  the  settlers  had  sprung  up,  strictly 
within  the  bounds  of  the  Colony.  The 
two  races  had  kept  jealously  apart.  At 
the  same  time  there  was  no  open  friction. 
The  natives,  with  characteristic  adula- 
tion of  success,  either  feigned  or  real, 
turned  tolerant  faces  on  the  settlers, 
while  these,  for  their  part,  had  no  cause 
to  be  other  than  friendly  with  those  that 
they  had  come  to  live  among.  But  there 
was  no  intermarriage.  The  settlers  were 
in  sufficient  numbers  to  make  this 
unnecessary,  and  racial  prejudices  still 
ran  very  high. 

Then,  just  as  Ulster  was  beginning  to 


36  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

put  on  the  garb  of  her  ultimate  prosperity, 
came  the  great  massacre  of  1641-1642. 
Without  any  provocation,  and  equally 
without  any  warning,  the  native  Irish, 
who  for  thirty-two  years  had  given  no 
sign  of  hostility,  rose  at  a  preconceived 
signal,  fell  upon  the  isolated  colonists, 
and  stripped  them  literally  to  the  skin. 
In  this  condition  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren were  turned  out  into  the  cold.  All 
succour  and  sustenance  to  the  outcasts 
was  prohibited  under  very  dire  penalties, 
so  that  the  old  and  the  ailing  quickly 
succumbed.  The  more  vigorous,  how- 
ever, hung  on  to  life  by  one  means  or 
another,  and  at  the  end  of  a  week,  nature's 
processes  were  voted  too  slow,  and  the 
hunting  down  and  butchery  of  these 
naked  wretches  became  a  recognized  form 
of  sport.  In  its  turn  mere  killing  began 


The  Ulster  Plantation  37 

to  pall,  and  tortures  of  various  kinds 
were  resorted  to,  at  first  as  a  means  of 
finding  out  where  the  settlers  had  hidden 
their  money,  but  later  on  for  the  mere 
sake  of  torturing.  A  letter  was  read  in 
the  English  Parliament  in  December,  1641, 
which  stated: 

"All  I  can  tell  you  is  the  miserable 
state  we  continue  under,  for  the  rebels 
daily  increase  in  men  and  munition  in  all 
parts,  except  the  province  of  Munster, 
exercising  all  manner  of  cruelties,  and 
striving  who  can  be  most  barbarously 
exquisite  in  tormenting  the  poor  Pro- 
testants, cutting  off  their  ears,  fingers  and 
hands,  plucking  out  their  eyes,  boiling 
the  hands  of  little  children  before  their 
mothers'  faces,  stripping  wromen  naked  and 
ripping  them  up,"  etc. 


38  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

The  main  record,  however,  of  this 
terrible  occurrence  is  furnished  by  Sir 
John  Temple,  Master  of  the  Rolls  at  the 
time,  who  collected  and  published  in  book 
form  the  sworn  depositions  of  the  many 
witnesses  who  gave  evidence  before  the 
Commission  of  Enquiry.  Many  of  the 
witnesses  had  themselves  been  mutilated, 
but  survived  long  enough  to  give  their 
evidence.  Others  had  a  knowledge  of 
the  Irish  language,  by  means  of  which 
they  were  able  to  pass  themselves  off  as 
Irish,  and  so  remain  unwilling  witnesses 
of  the  scenes  which  they  describe.  Forty 
volumes  of  the  depositions  are  still  pre- 
served at  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  The 
indictment  they  furnish  is  a  truly  appall- 
ing one.  Sir  John  says:  "If  we  shall 
take  a  Survey  of  primitive  Times  and 
look  into  the  Sufferings  of  the  first  Chris- 


The  Ulster  Plantation  39 

tians,  that  suffered  under  the  Tyranny  and 
cruel  Persecution  of  those  heathenish 
Emperors,  we  shall  certainly  not  find  any 
one  Kingdom  where  more  Christians 
suffered,  or  more  unparalleled  Cruelties 
were  acted  in  many  years  upon  them,  than 
were  in  Ireland  within  the  space  of  the 
first  two  Months  after  the  breaking  out 
of  this  Rebellion  ....  to  let  in  death 
among  an  innocent,  unprovoking,  un- 
resisting people,  who  had  always  lived 
peaceably  with  them,  administering  all 
manner  of  Helps  and  Comforts  to  those 
who  were  in  Distress:  that  made  no 
Difference  between  them  and  those  of 
their  own  Nation,  but  even  cherished  them 
as  Friends  and  loving  Neighbours,  with- 
out giving  any  Cause  of  Unkindness  or 
Distaste  unto  them." 

The  crime  of  the  Protestants,  however, 


40  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

was  not  unneighbourly  conduct,  but  the 
fact  of  their  presence  in  a  foreign  land. 
They  were  aliens,  and  the  elimination  of 
aliens  has  always  been  the  first  item  on 
the  official  Nationalist  programme.  They 
take  up  room. 

The  destruction  of  an  entire  colony  is 
no  light  task.  Its  thorough  accomplish- 
ment, at  a  period  when  powder  and  shot 
were  too  good  to  waste,  necessitated  the 
free  use  of  fire  and  water.  All  the  princi- 
pal Ulster  rivers — where  accessible — were 
called  into  service.  At  Portadown  over 
1,000  were,  at  one  time  or  another, 
drowned  in  the  River  Bann,  where  the 
bridge  was  broken  down  in  the  middle, 
and  the  victims  thrust  in  with  pikes  from 
both  sides.  We  have  a  similar  scene 
recorded  at  the  River  Toll  in  Armagh, 
where  a  number  were  drowned  near 


The  Ulster  Plantation  41 

Loughgall.  Two  hundred  were  piked  and 
flung  into  the  Tyrone  Blackwrater,  which 
for  a  time  ran  red  with  blood;  180  were 
drowned  at  the  bridge  of  Gallon,  and  100 
in  a  lough  at  Ballymacilmurrogh;  300 
were  drowned  in  one  day  in  a  millpool 
at  Killamoon.  Where  no  more  suitable 
water  was  available,  parties  were  driven 
to  bog-holes,  where  they  were  held  under 
with  pikes  till  dead. 

These  drownings  point  to  a  certain  dis- 
position on  the  part  of  the  natives — at 
any  rate  at  the  first — to  carry  out  the 
killings  as  rapidly  and  mercifully  as  cir- 
cumstances would  permit.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  they  were  acting  under 
orders,  and  these  orders  must  often  have 
been  embarrassing  from  their  wholesale 
nature.  For  example,  Phelim  O'Neil, 
the  head  of  the  movement,  after  being 


42  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

repulsed  from  the  Castle  of  Augher, 
ordered  all  the  Protestants  in  the  three 
adjacent  parishes  to  be  at  once  massacred, 
irrespective  of  age  or  sex.  Such  an  order 
would  almost  necessitate  some  compre- 
hensive scheme  of  execution.  O'Neil, 
who  is  described  as  a  weak  creature 
entirely  devoid  of  personal  courage,  in- 
variably signalized  his  defeats  in  the  field 
by  an  indiscriminate  massacre  of  all  the 
helpless  victims  within  reach.  After  his 
defeat  at  Lisburn,  he,  in  revenge, 
butchered  Lord  Caulfield,  who  had  just 
been  hospitably  entertaining  him,  and 
fifty  others  with  him. 

Fire,  though  obviously  less  merciful 
than  water,  also  proved  a  useful  agent  of 
quick  destruction — 152  men,  women  and 
children  were  burnt  in  the  Castle  of 
Lisgool  in  Fermanagh;  22  in  a  thatched 


The  Ulster  Plantation  43 

house  at  Kilmore,  in  Armagh;  26  at 
Langale,  in  the  same  county,  and  a  number 
in  the  church  at  Blackwaterstown.  The 
trouble  was  that  the  houses  in  which  the 
refugees  had  taken  shelter  would  not 
always  burn,  in  which  cases  more  circuit- 
ous methods  had  to  be  adopted. 

"Now  for  such  of  the  English  as  stood 
upon  their  Guard,  and  had  gathered 
together,  though  but  in  small  Numbers, 
the  Irish  had  recourse  to  their  ancient 
Stratagem,  which,  as  they  have  formerly, 
so  they  still  continue  to  make  frequent 
use  of  in  this  Rebellion;  and  that  was 
fairly  to  offer  unto  them  good  Conditions 
of  Quarter,  to  assure  them  their  Lives, 
their  Goods  and  free  Passage,  with  a  safe 
Conduct  into  what  Place  soever  they 
pleased,  and  to  confirm  these  Covenants 
sometimes  under  their  Hands  and  Seals, 


44  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

sometimes  with  deep  Oaths  and  Protesta- 
tions; and  then,  as  soon  as  they  had  them 
in  their  Power,  to  hold  themselves  dis- 
obliged from  their  Promises,  and  to  leave 
their  soldiers  at  Liberty  to  despoil,  strip 
and  murder  them  at  their  Pleasure." 

These  tactics  were  adopted  with  com- 
plete success  by  Rory  McGuire  at  Tullah, 
and  at  Liffenskeagh  in  Co.  Fermanagh; 
by  Phelim  O'Neil  and  his  brother  Tullach 
at  the  Cathedral  of  Armagh,  and  by 
Phil  O'Riley  at  Belterbert,  at  Newtown 
Church  and  at  Longford  Castle.  In  every 
case  all  those  who  surrendered  under 
promise  of  safe  conduct  were  stripped  and 
butchered. 

The  apparent  disposition  on  the  part 
of  the  natives  to  despatch  the  earlier  of 
their  victims  quickly  and  mercifully  was 
not  long-lived.  After  the  first  big  batches 


The  Ulster  Plantation  45 

of  captives  had  been  got  rid  of  by  drown- 
ing or  burning,  some  very  horrible  forms 
of  death  were  devised  for  small  detached 
parties,  the  details  of  which  are  too  revolt- 
ing for  reproduction.  Women  and 
children  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
worst  sufferers,  and  on  the  side  of  the 
natives  the  gentler  sex  and  even  the 
children  joined  eagerly  in  the  horrible 
work.  One  small  boy  was  heard  to  boast 
that  his  arm  was  so  wearied  with  hacking 
and  stabbing  that  he  could  not  raise  it. 

Sir  John  Temple  comments  on  the 
apparent  want  of  defensive  organization 
and  coherence  among  the  British  settlers, 
and  explains  this  by  pointing  out  that  in 
the  first  place  these  were  completely  taken 
by  surprise,  having  so  far  lived  on  terms 
of  perfect  amity  with  the  native  Irish; 
and  in  the  second  place  that — the  farms 


46  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

of  the  settlers  being  very  much  separated 
— it  would  have  been  impossible  for  the 
men  to  mass  together  for  defence  without 
abandoning  their  women  and  children 
to  inevitable  torture  and  death,  so  that 
they  preferred  to  stay  and  die  with  them. 
In  Derry,  Coleraine  and  Carrickfergus 
the  English  settlers  were  able  to  concen- 
trate in  certain  numbers,  and  on  these 
places  no  attempts  were  made  by  the 
natives.  The  latter,  according  to  Sir  John 
Temple,  would  appear  to  have  been  better 
murderers  than  fighters.  On  the  last  day 
of  December,  1641,  a  small  force,  con- 
sisting of  one  regiment,  was  landed  in 
Dublin  under  Sir  Simon  Harcourt.  This 
force  was  shortly  afterwards  supplemented 
as  follows: 

"Soon  after  a  considerable  Number  of 
Horse  as  well  as  of  Foot,   sent  over  by 


The  Ulster  Plantation  47 

the  Parliament  in  England,  arrived  in 
Dublin,  and  having  in  some  petty  en- 
counters thereabouts  tried  the  metal  of 
the  Rebels,  and  found  their  Spirit  of  a 
poor  and  base  Alloy,  they  began  extremely 
to  disvalue  them,  and  would  be  no  longer 
abased  with  the  fabulous  Reports  of  their 
great  Strength  or  Numbers,  which  with 
much  advantage  they  had  long  made 
use  of.  Therefore,  now  they  began  to 
seek  them  out  in  all  Places,  and  where- 
soever they  came  to  meet  with  them 
they  always  prevailed,  even  with  small 
Numbers  very  often  against  great  Mul- 
titudes of  them,  sparing  not  many  Times 
to  pursue  them  into  the  midst  of  their 
greatest  Fastnesses,  and  with  so  great 
Success  was  the  War  prosecuted  by  the 
English,  from  the  first  Landing  of  their 
Forces  out  of  England  until  September, 


48  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

1643,  as  that,  in  all  Encounters  they  had 
with  the  Rebels  during  that  Time,  they 
never  received  any  Scorn  or  Defeat,  but 
went  on  victoriously,  beating  them  down 
in  all  Parts  of  the  Kingdom." 

The  actual  number  of  the  Protestant 
colonists  who  were  massacred,  or  who 
died  of  cold  and  hunger,  is  not  easy  to 
arrive  at.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
victims  were  babies  or  young  children, 
who  would  not  be  included  in  any  recent 
census.  Even  the  census  of  adults  could 
be  no  more  than  approximate.  Dr.  (after- 
wards Sir  William)  Petty,  one  of  the 
ablest  men  of  the  day,  with  a  marked 
genius  for  statistics,  reckoned  the  Pro- 
testant settlers  in  Ireland  as  numbering 
260,000  in  1641,  and  150,000  in  1653, 
showing  a  wastage  in  the  twelve  years 
of  110,000.  The  latter  figure  is  largely 


The  Ulster  Plantation  49 

borne  out  by  a  petition  of  the  Irish 
Roman  Catholics  to  James  II.  in  1687, 
in  which  they  reckon  the  then  total 
population  of  Ireland  at  1,200,000,  of 
whom  170,000  were  Protestants. 

The  priests  in  the  weekly  returns  which 
they  furnished  from  the  various  parishes 
concerned,  claimed  154,000  victims  be- 
tween October,  1641,  and  April,  1642. 
A  Cork  priest,  named  Mahoney,  pub- 
lished in  1645  an  "exhortation"  to  his 
fellow-countrymen  in  which  he  said: 
"You  have  already  killed  150,000  enemies 
in  these  four  or  five  years,  as  your  very 
adversaries  howling  openly  confess  in  their 
writings,  and  you  do  not  deny.  I  think 
more  heretic  enemies  have  been  killed; 
would  that  they  had  all  been!  It  remains 
for  you  to  slay  all  the  other  heretics,  or 
expel  them  from  the  bounds  of  Ireland." 


50  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Mahoney's  estimate,  however,  clearly 
includes  those  killed  in  the  earlier  years 
of  the  fighting  which  succeeded  the 
massacre.  It  is  probable  that  the  great 
discrepancies  between  various  estimates 
as  to  the  numbers  killed,  arises  from  the 
same  confusion.  The  actual  massacre 
may  be  said  to  have  been  over  by  the 
middle  of  1642,  but  it  was  succeeded  by 
eleven  years  of  ceaseless  guerilla  warfare 
little  less  bloody,  during  which  a  further 
number  of  the  Protestant  settlers  in  Ire- 
land undoubtedly  lost  their  lives,  and 
subsequent  estimates  would  find  it  hard 
to  draw  a  clear  dividing  line  between  the 
victims  of  the  massacre  proper,  and  the 
victims  of  the  subsequent  fighting.  Crom- 
well himself,  when  interviewing  the  Dutch 
Ambassador  in  London  in  connection  with 
the  Waldensian  massacres,  in  which  some 


The  Ulster  Plantation  51 

Irish  troops  had  been  concerned,  said  that 
the  natives  in  Ireland  had  butchered 
200,000  of  the  settlers.  This  figure  seems, 
at  first  sight,  at  variance  with  Dr.  Petty's 
estimate,  which  only  shows  a  falling  off 
of  110,000  Protestants  in  twelve  years; 
but  to  this  110,000  must  be  added,  not 
only  the  natural  increase  of  the  resident 
Protestants  during  this  period,  but  the 
whole  of  Cromwell's  army  (36,000),  and 
the  many  British  "adventurers"  who 
swelled  the  influx  of  Protestants  during 
the  general  scramble  for  the  forfeited 
lands  which  succeeded  the  rebellion.  In 
any  case,  the  sworn  depositions — which 
can  still  be  seen  by  the  curious — make  it 
quite  clear  that  the  massacre  was  not 
only  of  a  wholesale  nature,  but  was 
carried  out  with  many  circumstances  of 
horror. 


52  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

This  rebellion  was  the  first  systematic 
attempt  to  exterminate  the  British  in 
Ireland  since  the  rising  of  the  natives 
against  the  very  early  settlers  in  1230. 
Desmond  had  made  a  personal  effort  in 
this  direction  in  1598,  as  to  which  the 
Four  Masters  make  boast  that  "after 
seventeen  days,  not  a  son  of  a  Saxon  was 
left  alive  in  the  Desmond  territories," 
but  this  patriotic  effort  was  only  local, 
O'Neil  in  Ulster  being  at  the  time  too 
much  harassed  by  Essex  to  co-operate. 

The  1641  massacre  may  unhesitatingly 
be  put  down  as  the  most  disastrous 
occurrence  in  the  history  of  the  island, 
for — apart  from  its  own  intrinsic  horrors 
—it  laid  the  seeds  of  an  undying  distrust 
among  future  generations  of  Colonists, 
and,  in  its  own  generation,  it  brought  in 
its  train  twelve  years  of  unintermittent 


The  Ulster  Plantation  53 

civil  warfare.  These  twelve  years  proved 
the  most  devastating  Ireland  had  known. 
All  the  worst  passions  of  men  were  let 
loose.  Reprisals  followed  on  atrocities, 
and  further  atrocities  followed  the  re- 
prisals. On  the  top  of  both  came  famine 
and  plague,  and,  by  the  time  peace  was 
finally  established,  nearly  a  third  of  the 
total  population  of  Ireland  had  perished. 
"The  cause  of  the  war,"  says  Petty, 
"was  the  desire  of  the  Romanists  to 
recover  the  Church  revenue,  worth  about 
«£  11 0,000  per  annum,  and  of  the  common 
Irish  to  get  back  all  the  Englishmen's 
estates,  and  of  the  ten  or  twelve  grandees 
to  get  the  empire  of  the  whole.  But,  as 
for  the  bloodshed  of  the  contest,  God 
knows  best  who  did  occasion  it." 

In  Ulster,  which  was  the  principal  scene 
of   the   massacre,    the    affair   was   largely 


54  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

engineered  by  Phelim  O'Neil,  whose  aim 
was,  of  course,  to  get  back  the  O'Neil 
estates,  which  had  been  forfeited  as  the 
result  of  thirty  years  of  brigandage  and 
broken  covenants  on  the  part  of  first 
Shane,  and  then  Hugh. 


THE  CROMWELLIAN 
SETTLEMENT 


A  T  the  end  of  eight  years  of  carnage, 
*•*•  Cromwell  landed  at  Dublin  in 
1649.  His  military  genius  at  once  made 
itself  felt.  Order  and  system  took  the 
place  of  independent  guerilla  warfare,  and 
a  permanent  settlement  seemed  at  length 
within  sight.  Ireton  succeeded  Cromwell, 
and  Coote  and  Monro  succeeded  Ireton, 
but  it  was  four  years  after  Cromwell's 
landing  before  peace  was  finally  estab- 
lished. 

Irish  writers  are  fond  of  stigmatizing 
Cromwell's  regime  as  a  reign  of  terror, 
but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  was  not  so. 
He  was  scrupulously  just  in  his  dealings 
with  the  natives,  and  never  brutal.  His 

57 


58  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

first  act  on  landing  was  to  publish  a 
general  order  that  no  violence  should  be 
done  to  any  persons  not  in  arms  with 
the  enemy:  that  soldiers  taking  goods 
without  payment  should  be  punished  ac- 
cording to  the  articles  of  war,  and  that 
officers  who  allowed  this  rule  to  be  dis- 
obeyed should  forfeit  their  commissions. 
These  rules  were  strictly  adhered  to. 
Soldiers  were  hung  for  stealing  chickens, 
and  no  act  of  rapine  passed  unpunished. 
Ireton,  who  succeeded  Cromwell,  was,  if 
anything,  more  punctilious. 

It  is  more  than  probable  that,  in  his 
own  day,  Cromwell  was  respected  and 
even  admired  by  the  natives,  as  such 
men  invariably  are  in  Ireland.  Rowley 
Lascelles,  who  in  the  early  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century  was  appointed  by  the 
Government  to  examine  the  Irish  State 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement         59 

Records  and  Rolls,  reported  that  his 
examination  led  him  to  the  belief  that 
Cromwell's  Government  was  the  most 
popular  Ireland  has  ever  known.  He 
was  no  promiscuous  butcher,  like  Coote. 
At  Drogheda  and  Wexford  he  was  un- 
doubtedly severe,  but  only  with  such 
severity  as  was  recognized  by  the  then 
usages  of  war.  In  the  case  of  Drogheda, 
the  town  was  summoned  to  surrender 
unconditionally.  Aston,  the  Governor, 
who  had  stored  within  the  city  large 
supplies  of  food  and  munitions,  refused, 
thinking  that  Cromwell  would  follow  the 
traditional  procedure  in  such  cases,  and 
sit  down  before  the  town  for  a  protracted 
siege  which  might  end  anyhow.  Crom- 
well, however,  who  was  no  respecter  of 
traditional  methods,  outraged  all  calcula- 
tions by  immediately  assaulting  the  town. 


60  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Twice  he  was  repulsed,  but  the  third 
assault,  led  by  himself,  was  successful. 
All  those  found  in  arms  were  put  to  the 
sword,  and  of  those  that  surrendered,  one 
out  of  every  ten  was  shot  and  the  re- 
mainder deported  to  Barbadoes.  Very 
much  the  same  programme  was  carried 
out  at  Wexford,  to  the  immense  surprise 
of  the  garrison,  who  were  not  used  to  such 
energetic  forms  of  warfare.  The  effect 
in  Ireland  of  these  two  swift  strokes  was 
electrical.  All  the  principal  towns  hauled 
down  their  flags,  and  were  treated  with 
a  leniency  which  was  new  to  Ireland. 

The  strong  probability  is  that  Cromwell 
owes  his  unpopularity  with  Irish  writers 
of  the  Prendergast  type,  not  to  his 
severity  with  the  sword,  but  to  his  banish- 
ment of  the  natives  across  the  Shannon. 
By  this  edict  he  became  in  great  measure 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement        61 

the  official  father  of  the  grievance  which 
is  the  starting  point  of  all  Ireland's 
Philippics  against  England  and  English 
rule.  He  made  it  possible  for  the  first 
time  for  the  native  lands  to  be  occupied 
with  security  by  Protestant  colonists  from 
across  the  water.  James  I.'s  scheme,  as 
an  act  of  permanent  plantation,  may  be 
said  to  have  failed,  for  half  the  settlers 
had  been  butchered,  and  the  rest  driven 
to  concentrate  for  protection  in  such 
towns  as  Enniskillen,  Derry,  Coleraine  and 
Carrickfergus.  The  dreadful  fate  of  the 
immigrants  of  forty  years  before  could 
not  but  scare  the  mere  agriculturalist 
from  any  desire  he  might  otherwise  have 
had  to  make  Ulster  his  home.  It  was 
clear  that  the  goodwill  of  the  natives 
could  not  be  won  by  individual  acts  of 
kindness.  All  such  were  outweighed,  and. 


62  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

indeed,  wholly  neutralized  by  the  initial 
act  of  usurpation.  Nothing  could  have 
been  more  conciliatory  than  the  James  I. 
settlers,  but  their  conciliation  had  counted 
for  nothing  in  face  of  the  one  salient  fact 
that  they  were  in  arbitrary  occupation  of 
Irish  soil.  This  has  always  been  the 
Irish  attitude  of  mind,  and  is,  in  fact, 
the  keynote  of  the  whole  Irish  question. 
It  explains  why  neither  local  charities 
nor  national  concessions  elicit  so  much 
as  a  glimmer  of  gratitude  from  those 
who  benefit  by  them.  What  call  is  there 
for  gratitude  towards  those  who  dole 
back  in  fragments  that  which  they 
originally  stole  en  bloc? 

It  was  evident,  then,  that  friendly  over- 
tures on  the  part  of  the  British  Colonists 
could  make  no  permanent  impression  on 
the  native  mind,  which  was  incapable  of 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement         63 

seeing  anything  beyond  the  main  fact 
of  dispossession.  This  left  two  courses 
only  open:  either  the  evacuation  of  Irish 
lands  by  the  Protestants,  or  the  re- 
colonization  of  the  eastern  half  of  Ireland 
under  conditions  which  would  ensure  se- 
curity of  life  and  property  to  the  colonists. 
Cromwell  preferred  the  latter  course.  The 
bulk  of  the  native  population  was  banished 
to  the  west  of  Ireland,  only  such  numbers 
being  retained  in  the  east  as  would  keep 
the  land  tilled  without  acting  as  a  stand- 
ing menace.  There  was  to  be  no  possi- 
bility of  a  recurrence  of  1641. 

Cromwell's  act  has  secured  for  him  the 
undying  hatred  of  the  native  Irish,  because 
it  laid  the  foundation  stone  of  colonial 
stability  in  Ireland;  but  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  it  was  a  statesmanlike 
measure,  had  it  only  been  carried  out  in 


64  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

a  more  practical  manner;  and  it  was  a 
measure  which  was  morally  justified  by 
the  fact  of  the  recent  massacre.  The 
natives  outnumbered  the  colonists  by  six 
to  one,  and  in  the  face  of  recent  experi- 
ences, no  more  British  agriculturalists 
could  be  expected  to  settle  in  east  Ireland 
unless  the  great  mass  of  the  natives  were 
removed  to  a  safe  distance.  Cromwell 
foresaw  all  these  things,  and  took  his 
measures  accordingly,  but  in  detail  his 
scheme  proved  unworkable.  The  first  step 
was  the  forfeiture  of  the  lands  of  all  those 
implicated  in  the  late  rebellion,  who  were 
bidden  to  betake  themselves  across  the 
Shannon.  By  this  edict  over  2,000,000 
acres  became  forfeit.  This  figure  included 
not  only  native  Irish  lands,  but  the  lands 
of  prominent  Royalists,  and  "ma- 
lignants."  Glebe  and  Crown  lands  were 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement         65 

also  confiscated,  and  thrown  into  the 
common  basket  with  the  lands  of  the 
rebels.  An  elaborate  and  costly  survey, 
under  the  direction  of  Sir  William  Petty, 
followed,  after  which  came  the  question 
of  distribution. 

Here  was  the  real  trouble.  The 
general  idea  was  that  the  lands  should 
be  divided  among  the  Cromwellian  soldiers 
in  satisfaction  of  their  four  years'  arrears 
of  pay,  and  also  among  those  who  had 
advanced  money  to  finance  the  expedition. 
This,  on  the  face  of  it,  was  as  it  should 
be,  but  when  it  came  to  paying  36,000 
soldiers,  to  whom  varying  amounts  were 
due,  with  allotments  of  land  of  very 
varying  value,  the  difficulties  of  just 
dealing  were  felt  to  be  insurmountable. 
In  the  end  it  was  decided  (with  the  army 
consenting)  that  the  distribution  should 


66  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

be  by  lot:  each  regiment  taking  its  pay 
in  the  meadows,  bogs  or  mountains,  as 
the  case  might  be,  of  the  particular  dis- 
trict for  whose  subjugation  it  had  been 
responsible.  Munster  lands  were  valued 
at  12s.  per  acre,  Leinster  at  8s.,  and 
Ulster  at  4s.,  figures  which  are  of  no 
small  interest  in  view  of  the  relative 
prosperity  of  the  three  Provinces  to-day. 
The  scheme  was  worked  out  with  military 
precision,  but  as  a  Land  Act  it  was  fore- 
doomed to  failure. 

The  Ironsides  were  great  soldiers,  but 
they  were  not  agriculturalists,  and  in 
most  cases  they  were  only  too  glad  to 
barter  their  newly-acquired  lands  for  a 
lump  sum  down.  Their  officers  and  many 
of  the  old  residents  took  advantage  of  the 
soldiers'  difficulties  to  build  up  big  estates 
at  small  cost  to  themselves,  and  the 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement         67 

prime  object  of  the  settlement  was  on  the 
high  road  to  defeat  even  before  the 
death  of  the  Commonwealth.  In  place 
of  a  militant  British  population  evenly 
distributed  over  the  whole  of  the  newly- 
forfeited  lands,  the  year  1660  saw  a 
scattered  British  population  working  lands 
of  unwieldy  extent  with  the  aid  of  the 
very  natives  who  had  lately  been  dis- 
possessed of  them.  Unnatural  conditions 
such  as  these  could  only  breed  trouble, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  the  native 
labourers  by  day  became  Tories  or 
Rapparees  by  night,  maiming,  killing  or 
burning  the  live  and  dead  stock  of  those 
they  worked  for. 

The  accession  of  Charles  II.  still  further 
added  to  the  confusion  and  unrest.  This 
episcopalian  Monarch  confirmed  the  Crom- 
wellian Settlement  as  a  whole,  but  restored 


68  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

many  of  the  native  proprietors  to  their 
forfeited  lands,  and,  as  was  only  to  be 
expected,  handed  back  to  the  Bishops 
and  Protestant  Church  generally  the  glebe 
lands  of  which  Cromwell  the  Nonconfor- 
mist had  mulcted  them.  This  pious  act 
deprived  many  of  the  Ironsides  of  the 
lands  to  which  they  considered  them- 
selves justly  entitled  in  respect  of  their 
four  years'  unpaid  service  in  Ireland, 
and — seeing  nothing  on  the  horizon  but 
the  accession  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Duke 
of  York — thousands  of  these  sturdy  non- 
conformists emigrated  to  America,  there 
to  found  that  remarkable  New  England 
society  so  famous  in  romance  and  verse. 

Although  the  Cromwellian  Settlement 
may  be  said  to  have  failed  of  its  full 
intention,  its  effect  on  the  ultimate 
Ulster  question,  i.e.,  the  relations  existing 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement         69 

between  the  native  Irish  and  the  British 
Colonists,  was  very  far  reaching.  The 
Calvinistic  tendencies  of  the  new  Settlers 
accentuated  more  than  ever  the  im- 
passable social  and  religious  barrier  be- 
tween the  two  races.  Intermarriage  with 
the  natives  had  always  been  forbidden 
by  law  from  the  earliest  days  of  British 
colonization  in  Ireland.  In  1367  the  law 
was  so  strict  that  any  colonist  marrying 
a  native  Irish  woman  was  liable  to  be 
hanged,  drawn  and  quartered.  Ireton 
himself  pronounced  the  direst  penalties 
against  any  who  should  so  offend.  But, 
however  much  such  stern  measures  may 
have  been  called  for  in  Munster  and 
Leinster,  there  was  no  need  for  them  in 
Ulster.  Here  there  were  Protestant  girls 
in  plenty,  and  there  was  no  disposition 
on  the  part  of  such  Ironsides  as  remained 


70  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

and  settled  to  look  beyond  these. 
Prendergast  quotes  a  stanza  which  well 
illustrates  the  mental  attitude  of  the 
seventeenth  century  settlers,  and,  indeed, 
of  their  descendants  to-day  in  the 
twentieth  century. 

" rather  than  turne 

From   English  principles  would  sooner  burne, 

And  rather  than  marrie  an  Irish  wife, 

Would  batchellars  remain  for  tearme  of  life." 

On  the  side  of  the  natives  there  was 
no  such  prejudice.  Intermarriage  had 
been  the  admitted  cause  of  the  failure  of 
all  previous  attempts  to  implant  British 
ideas  and  British  customs  in  Ireland  by 
means  of  colonization.  Intermarriage 
was,  therefore,  the  obvious  weapon  with 
which  to  defeat  the  intended  effect  of  the 
Cromwellian  Settlement.  By  the  laws  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  the  children 
of  mixed  marriages  must  always  be 


The  Cromwellian  Settlement         71 

brought  up  as  Catholics,  so  that  the 
interests  of  the  priests  lay  very  palpably 
in  that  direction.  A  standing  testimony 
to  the  stern  resistance  of  the  colonists  to 
the  allurements  of  the  native  girls  is  to 
be  found  in  present-day  Ulster's  800,000 
Protestants,  all  of  whom  would  to-day 
be  profitable  members  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  had  their  forbears  at  any  time 
through  the  centuries  yielded  to  the 
charms  of  the  native  daughters  of  Erin. 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


modern  Ulster  question  may 
be  said  to  have  germinated  on 
the  23rd  of  October,  1641,  a  date  solemnly 
commemorated  for  many  years  afterwards 
among  the  natives.  Prior  to  this  la- 
mentable outbreak,  religious  antagonism 
had  been  merely  clerical;  from  that  date 
on  it  became  political.  Evidence  of  this 
changed  spirit  was  soon  forthcoming. 

The  wholesale  emigration  of  the  Ironsides 
under  the  heavy  burden  of  the  Restora- 
tion, though  a  serious  blow  to  the  fighting 
power  of  the  settlers,  still  left  them 
sufficiently  strong  to  be  safe  from  open 
attack;  but  there  were  other  means 

75 


76  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

open  to  the  natives  by  which  they  could 
make  life  unprofitable  and  unpalatable. 
The  Rapparees  had  made  their  appear- 
ance as  early  as  the  first  allotment  of 
forfeited  lands  in  1655,  but,  till  the 
accession  of  James  II.,  they  could  hardly 
be  said  to  have  constituted  a  real  menace 
to  the  settlers.  These  were  armed  and 
well  capable  of  self-defence.  But  with 
the  last  of  the  Stuarts  on  the  throne 
there  came  drastic  and  ominous  changes, 
eloquent  to  future  generations  of  the 
basic  principles  of  Home  Rule.  The  Pro- 
testant settlers  were  deprived  of  all  civil 
and  executive  offices,  and,  at  the  instance 
of  the  national  councils,  were  forbidden 
under  pain  of  death  to  carry  or  possess 
arms.  The  native  Roman  Catholics  were 
not  disarmed,  and  the  boldness  of  the 
Rapparees  increased  in  exact  ratio  to 


The  Civil  War  77 

the  helplessness  of  the  settlers  to  defend 
themselves.  These  were  now  harassed 
and  persecuted  in  every  conceivable  way. 
Their  stock  was  mutilated  or  carried  off, 
their  crops  destroyed.  Men  were  executed 
for  having  in  their  houses  arms  which 
the  search  parties  had  themselves  con- 
cealed there.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  had  James'  short  (two  and  a  half 
years)  reign  been  prolonged  by  so  much 
as  one  year,  the  scenes  of  1641  would 
have  been  re-enacted.  All  the  native 
interests,  religious  and  political,  were 
working  up  to  that  pious  end,  when  the 
deus  ex  machina  suddenly  burst  on  the 
scene  in  the  person  of  William  of  Orange, 
son-in-law  to  James  and  claimant  to  his 
throne. 

The  worst  possibilities  of  the  situation 
were   now   averted,   but  the  trials   of   the 


78  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

settlers  were  by  no  means  at  an  end. 
The  Rapparees  were  strong  in  numbers 
and  fully  armed,  and  their  suppression 
was  a  slow  process.  They  were  finally 
extirpated  by  the  primitive  device  of 
putting  a  price  on  their  heads.  The 
effect  was  instantaneous.  The  receiving 
stations  were  almost  embarrassed  by  the 
numbers  of  heads  that  daily  arrived  on 
the  scene.  "The  Irish  bring  them  in;" 
reported  Major  Morgan,  who  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  idea;  "brothers  and 
cousins  cut  one  another's  throats."  The 
plan  was  not  a  pretty  one,  but  it  worked. 
Within  twelve  months  of  the  posting  of 
the  notice,  the  bulk  of  the  Rapparees 
were  no  more,  and  the  survivors  were 
correspondingly  prosperous. 

The  appearance  of  William  of  Orange 
on  the    political    horizon    of    Ulster    was 


The  Civil  War  79 

sensational  in  its  results.  In  the  eyes  of 
the  Protestants  he  was  from  the  first 
the  lawful  king,  and  organized  resistance 
without  treason  was  now  for  the  first 
time  possible.  The  armed  bands  of  James 
were,  however,  still  very  much  in  the 
ascendant.  Tyrconnell  had  a  force  of 
40,000  well-equipped  men,  and  there  was 
no  organized  army  on  the  other  side 
with  which  to  oppose  him.  The  dis- 
armament of  the  Protestants  had  been 
thorough,  and  their  re-equipment  was 
necessarily  a  gradual  process. 

The  first  collective  stand  of  the  per- 
secuted settlers  was  of  a  highly  dramatic 
nature.  The  city  of  Derry,  or  London- 
derry, as  it  was  now  called,  had  always 
been  prominent  in  Ulster  politics.  It 
had  been  very  conspicuous  as  a  Pro- 
testant stronghold  during  O'Dogherty's 


80  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

1608  rebellion;  and  during  the  massacres 
of  1641  and  1642  it  had  proved  a  safe 
and  sure  sanctuary  for  all  the  scattered 
settlers  from  the  surrounding  district; 
and  now,  in  1689,  it  was  destined  to  make 
itself  famous  for  ever  by  a  defence  which 
stands  out  as  one  of  the  most  gallant  and 
stirring  achievements  in  the  history  of 
the  world. 

On  December  9th  James'  forces  were 
seen  approaching  the  city  from  across  the 
Foyle,  and  the  Town  Council,  meeting  in 
hasty  conclave,  decided  that  the  city  was 
indefensible  and  must  be  surrendered. 
Some  apprentice  boys  of  the  town,  how- 
ever, thought  differently,  and,  taking  the 
matter  into  their  own  hands,  shut  the 
gates  in  the  very  faces  of  James'  aston- 
ished troops,  who  thereupon  marched  off 
to  Coleraine  without  firing  a  shot.  This 


The  Civil  War  81 

act  on  the  part  of  the  "  'Prentice  Boys" 
is  still  commemorated  in  Derry  on  each 
successive  9th  December,  and  the  name  of 
Crookshanks,  Spike,  Campsis  and  Sher- 
rard  are  still,  and  ever  will  be,  famous  in 
the  Maiden  City. 

The  consequences  of  this  daring  defiance 
of  James  II.  were  not  long  in  falling  on 
the  little  town,  which  four  months  later 
found  itself  invested  by  James  himself 
with  an  army  of  25,000  men,  including 
5,000  French  under  de  Rosen. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  inhabitants  had 
been  making  such  preparations  as  lay  in 
their  power,  and  a  defence  was  now  set 
up  which  stands  out  to  this  day  as  the  one 
episode  of  military  heroism  in  the  history 
of  Ireland.  The  Governor,  Lundy,  was 
suspected  of  treachery  and  expelled  from 
the  city,  and  a  clergyman  named  George 


82  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Walker  was  elected  to  take  his  place. 
Under  his  leadership  the  gallant  little 
town  held  out  for  three  months,  under 
circumstances  of  appalling  hardship. 
Famine  and  sword  reduced  the  effective 
garrison  from  7,500  to  3,000;  10,000  of 
the  civil  population  (two-thirds  of  the 
total  number)  died  of  hunger  or  disease, 
but  "no  surrender"  was  still  the  watch- 
word of  the  gaunt  skeletons  that  manned 
the  walls.  Finally,  on  July  30th,  when 
the  few  survivors  were  at  their  very  last 
gasp,  Kirk  with  three  store  ships  and  a 
frigate  broke  the  boom  across  the  Foyle, 
and  Derry  was  relieved. 

Derry  and  Enniskillen,  so  far,  had  been 
the  only  towns  in  Ireland  which  had 
refused  submission  to  James  II.,  but,  with 
the  firm  establishment  of  William  on  the 
English  throne,  the  work  of  recovering 


The  Civil  War  83 

Ireland  was  promptly  taken  in  hand. 
Schomberg  landed  at  Carrickfergus  with 
an  army  of  20,000,  composed  of  French 
mercenaries  and  raw  English  levies,  and, 
marching  south,  cleared  the  country  as 
far  as  Dundalk,  where  he  entrenched 
himself.  Here  he  lay  inactive  for  the  rest 
of  the  autumn,  and  in  November  withdrew 
with  his  army  to  Belfast.  William,  greatly 
incensed  by  this  laxity  on  the  part  of 
Schomberg,  now  resolved  to  take  the  field 
in  person,  and  in  June  of  the  following 
year  he  crossed  the  channel  and  took  over 
command.  James  was  in  Dublin  at  the 
time,  and,  moving  north  with  his  army  to 
the  Boyne,  he  took  up  a  strong  defen- 
sive position  on  the  right  bank  of  that 
river,  about  a  mile  above  the  town  of 
Drogheda. 

Here,  on  July  1st,  the  rival  monarchs 


84  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

met.  The  opposing  forces  were  about 
equal  in  number,  but  the  advantage  in 
position  was  greatly  in  favour  of  the  Irish, 
who  acted  solely  on  the  defensive. 
William,  however,  forded  the  river,  scaled 
the  heights  opposite,  and  easily  dislodged 
the  native  army,  which,  after  the  feeblest 
show  of  resistance,  fled  to  the  south. 
William  now  returned  to  England,  and 
Ginkel  assumed  command  of  his  army  in 
place  of  Schomberg,  who  had  fallen  at 
the  Boyne.  The  Irish  army,  retreating 
southwards,  took  up  a  strong  position  on 
the  hill  of  Aughrim,  near  Ballinasloe,  a 
hill  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  bogs,  and 
difficult  of  approach.  They  numbered 
25,000  and  were  commanded  by  St.  Ruth, 
a  French  general  of  high  repute.  Ginkel 
had  only  18,000  troops,  but  he  attacked 
the  hill  with  complete  confidence  and 


The  Civil  War  85 

totally  routed  the  defenders,  who  scattered 
and  took  to  flight  in  all  directions. 
This  victory  was  shortly  followed  by  the 
surrender  of  the  Irish  garrison  at 
Limerick,  and  the  war  was  at  an  end. 

The  Irish  war  between  William  and 
James  can  hardly  be  classed  as  a  religious 
war.  It  is  true  that,  with  hardly  any 
exceptions,  the  Protestants  were  on  the 
side  of  William  and  the  native  Roman 
Catholics  on  that  of  James,  but  the  real 
cause  of  quarrel  lay  in  no  question  of 
doctrine,  but  in  a  dispute  between  two 
Princes  as  to  the  right  to  the  English 
throne.  The  effect  of  the  war,  however, 
was  undoubtedly  to  heighten  the  barrier 
already  existing,  and  to  increase  the 
bitterness  between  the  two  races  living 
side  by  side  in  the  one  island.  Open 
hostilities,  at  no  time  congenial  to  the 


86  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

native  temperament,  were  at  an  end,  but 
in  their  wake  followed  the  stealthy  mid- 
night houghings  and  burnings  which  have 
always  played  so  conspicuous  a  part  in 
the  Irish  struggle  for  independence.  The 
Rapparees  had  been  put  down  by 
methods  which  have  already  been  de- 
scribed, but  their  place  was  taken  by 
various  patriotic  Societies  organized  on 
the  same  lines.  In  1711  a  secret  society 
known  as  the  "Houghers"  appeared  in 
Connaught,  with  the  usual  programme 
of  maiming  and  mutilation  of  farm  stock. 
All  the  victims  were  Protestants,  and 
no  convictions  could  be  obtained.  In 
1761  the  "Whiteboys"  appeared  in 
Tipperary.  This  was  a  purely  Roman 
Catholic  Society,  organized  and  officered 
by  priests.  Like  all  similar  societies  in 
Ireland,  it  worked  solely  by  night,  and 


The  Civil  War  87 

it  perhaps  excelled  all  others  in  the 
hideous  cruelty  which  characterized  its 
outrages.  For  five  and  twenty  years  it 
terrorized  the  entire  country. 


THE  1798  REBELLION 


TN  1791  was  founded  the  United  Irish- 
-*•  men's  League.  Its  prima  facie  in- 
spiration was  the  French  Revolution, 
which  at  the  time  was  supposed  to  be 
setting  the  world  a  practical  example  of 
the  potentialities  of  oppressed  humanity 
against  organized  tyranny. 

The  movement  in  its  opening  stages 
was — as  its  name  indicates — non-sectarian. 
The  Presbyterians  of  Ulster,  at  that  time, 
numbered  some  100,000,  and  under  an 
intolerant  Episcopalianism,  their  griev- 
ances as  loyal  and  law-abiding  subjects 
were  very  real.  They  could  also,  with 
perfect  justice,  complain  of  other  most 
substantial  grievances,  both  agrarian  and 

91 


92  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

commercial;  so  that,  what  with  one  thing 
and  another,  they  were  in  a  perilously  ripe 
state  for  any  justifiable  agitation  against 
authority. 

The  ostensible  aim  of  the  movement 
was  to  bring  these  Northern  Presbyterians, 
greatly  discontented  at  the  moment,  into 
line  with  the  Roman  Catholic  natives 
who  were  always  discontented,  and  so 
present  a  common  face  to  the  English 
Government.  But  there  was  more  in  it 
than  this,  as  very  soon  became  apparent. 
In  those  days  a  very  definite  gap  separated 
the  Presbyterians  from  the  members  of 
the  Church  of  Ireland.  At  the  present 
day  both  denominations  are  loosely 
bracketted  together  as  "Protestants,"  but 
it  was  far  otherwise  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century;  and  the  primary 
design  of  the  native  Roman  Catholics 


The  1798  Rebellion  93 

was  to  utilize  the  Presbyterian  strength 
against  the  Episcopalian  Protestants; 
after  which  the  Presbyterians  themselves 
could  have  been  dealt  with  easily  enough. 

This  simple  scheme  was  naturally  not 
made  public.  The  United  Irishmen 
orators  were — as  Irishmen  always  are — 
impassioned,  eloquent  and  even  plausible, 
and  it  was  some  time  before  the  sinister 
designs  behind  their  smooth  utterances 
began  to  be  suspected.  In  the  mean- 
while many  Home  County  Protestants 
of  good  family  joined  the  League,  which 
for  a  time  presented  all  the  appearance 
of  a  national  movement. 

In  the  Irish  Parliament  the  situation 
was  much  debated,  many  well-meaning 
Protestant  members  taking  the  line  that 
the  movement  was  genuine  and  justifiable, 
and,  in  fact,  all  that  it  represented  itself 


94  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

to  be.  To  these  the  usual  words  of 
warning  were  given  by  those  who  were 
more  clear-sighted.  During  the  dis- 
cussion in  1793  on  the  bill  for  the  removal 
of  Catholic  disabilities,  Dr.  Duigenan 
made  a  statement  which — considering  the 
source  from  which  it  came — may  be  taken 
as  the  most  momentous  pronouncement 
on  the  Irish  question  which  has  ever  been 
uttered.  Dr.  Duigenan  was  of  the 
humblest  origin.  Born  in  a  cabin,  of  a 
native  Roman  Catholic  family,  he  was 
reared  and  educated — like  all  those  around 
him — as  a  Catholic,  but  later  on,  for 
political  reasons,  adopted  Protestantism. 
"The  Irish  Catholics,"  he  said,  "to  a 
man  esteem  all  Protestants  as  usurpers 
of  their  estates.  To  this  day  they  settle 
those  estates  on  the  marriage  of  their 
sons  and  daughters.  They  have  accurate 


The  1798  Rebellion  95 

maps  of  them.  They  have  lately  published 
in  Dublin  a  map  of  this  kingdom  can- 
toned out  among  the  old  proprietors. 
They  abhor  all  Protestants  and  all  English- 
men as  plunderers  and  oppressors, 
exclusive  of  their  detestation  of  them  as 
heretics.  If  the  Parliament  of  this  country 
can  be  so  infatuated  as  to  put  the  Irish 
Catholics  on  a  better  footing  than  the 
English  Catholics,  and  if  the  English 
nation  shall  countenance  such  a  frenzy, 
either  this  Kingdom  will  be  for  ever 
severed  from  the  British  Empire,  or  it 
must  be  again  conquered  by  a  British 
Army.  The  Protestants  of  Ireland  are 
but  the  British  garrison  in  an  enemy's 
country,  and  if  deserted  by  the  parent 
state  must  surrender  at  discretion. 
English  ministers  are  simply  blind.  I 
tell  them  they  are  greatly  deceived  if 


96  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

they  have  been  induced  to  believe  that 
an  Irish  Catholic  is,  ever  was,  or  ever  will 
be,  a  loyal  subject  of  a  British  Protestant 
King,  or  a  Protestant  Government." 

The  extraordinary  educational  value  of 
this  utterance  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a 
disclosure  from  within,  by  one  of  the 
natives,  of  the  secret  soul  of  the  Irish 
people. 

It  was  not  long  before  there  was 
further  confirmation  of  Dr.  Duigenan's 
warning.  Later  on  in  the  same  year 
the  entire  south-west  corner  of  Ireland 
rose  simultaneously,  and  a  number  of 
outrages  were  committed  on  Protestant 
farmers  and  clergymen.  The  rising  was 
easily  quelled,  and  at  Carrick  a  number  of 
prisoners  were  taken.  These  volunteered 
the  information  that,  when  matters  were 
rather  more  ripe,  all  the  Protestants  and 


The  1798  Rebellion  97 

Presbyterians  in  Ireland  were  to  be  killed 
in  one  night.  Disclosures  such  as  these 
began  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  Ulster 
Presbyterians  to  the  precipice  towards 
which  they  had  been  drifting.  There 
were  other  disquieting  signs,  too,  in  the 
firmament.  For  some  time  past  bands 
of  midnight  ruffians,  describing  themselves 
as  Defenders,  had  been  terrorizing  the 
agriculturists  of  Ulster.  So  far  these  had 
not  been  identified  with  the  United 
Irishmen,  but  that  was  shortly  to  come. 
In  January,  1791,  they  broke  into  the 
house  of  Mr.  Alexander  Barclay,  a  school- 
master at  Forkhill,  near  Dundalk.  They 
tightened  a  cord  round  his  neck  till  his 
tongue  protruded,  which  they  then  cut 
out.  They  cut  off  the  four  fingers  and 
thumb  of  his  right  hand,  after  which  they 
proceeded  to  treat  his  wife  in  exactly  the 


98  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

same  way.  Her  brother,  a  boy  of  thir- 
teen, had  arrived  that  morning  from 
Armagh  on  a  visit.  They  cut  out  his 
tongue  and  the  calf  of  his  right  leg,  and 
left  them  all  in  that  condition. 

This  outrage  was  entirely  unprovoked. 
Barclay  was  not  only  inoffensive  but 
philanthropic,  for  he  taught  thirty  chil- 
dren in  the  village  gratis.  His  supposed 
offence  was  teaching  in  a  school  of  which 
the  Defenders — i.e.,  Defenders  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  faith — did  not  approve. 
All  the  native  Irish  in  the  village  ex- 
ulted openly  over  this  hideous  act,  as 
though  it  had  been  some  glorious  feat  of 
arms. 

The  Defenders  continued  their  depreda- 
tions for  some  time  before  they  were 
finally  identified  with  the  United  Irish- 
men. The  moment  this  identity  was 


The  1798  Rebellion  99 

established,  and  it  became  generally 
known  that  the  United  Irishmen  by  day 
became  Defenders  by  night,  outraging 
the  persons  and  property  of  those  with 
whom  they  were  nominally  "united,"  the 
movement  was  dead,  as  far  as  the  Ulster 
Presbyterians  were  concerned.  The  name, 
however,  was  still  retained  on  account  of 
its  plausible  sound. 

The  outrages  perpetrated  by  the  De- 
fenders soon  became  so  unendurable  that, 
in  self-defence,  the  Ulstermen  started  a 
counter-organization,  known  as  "Peep-o'-' 
Day  Boys,"  mainly  composed  of  Presby- 
terians. The  relations  between  Protestant 
and  Catholic  were  now  at  the  breaking- 
point,  and  in  September,  1795,  matters 
may  be  said  to  have  culminated  in  a 
miniature  battle  which  was  fought  at  a 
village  in  Tyrone,  known  as  the  Diamond. 


100  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

The  Catholics,  who  were  the  aggressors, 
outnumbered  the  Protestants  by  more 
than  two  to  one,  but  they  were  completely 
routed,  leaving  48  of  their  number  dead 
upon  the  field. 

On  the  same  night  the  Orange  Lodge 
was  instituted.  This  Society  was  a  purely 
defensive  organization,  which  was  called 
into  being  out  of  a  most  acute  necessity 
for  some  combined  front  to  be  shown,  by 
a  persecuted  minority,  to  those  whose 
avowed  object  and  boast  now  was  their 
total  extermination.  It  was  not  long 
before  it  had  enrolled  20,000  sturdy  and 
determined  men,  and  there  can  be  very 
little  doubt  that  it  was  the  existence  of 
this  body,  ready  at  any  time  to  face  and 
defeat  more  than  double  their  number,  as 
they  had  at  the  Diamond,  that  alone 
deterred  the  natives  from  an  attempt  to 


The  1798  Rebellion  101 

repeat  the  scenes  of  1641.  Later  on, 
when  the  rebellion  actually  did  break  out, 
the  Orangemen  served  as  yeomanry,  and 
were  of  incalculable  service  to  a  govern- 
ment which  at  the  time  hardly  knew 
which  way  to  turn  for  reliable  troops. 

The  Orange  Lodge  took  its  name  in 
honour  of  William  III.,  and  the  adoption 
of  the  colour  naturally  followed  on  the 
adoption  of  the  name.  It  is,  however, 
interesting  to  bear  in  mind  that,  at  the 
battle  of  the  Boyne,  William's  colours  had 
been  green,  and  James's  white.  There  is 
something  peculiarly  Hibernian  in  the 
thought  that  the  wearing  of  the  green  was 
instituted  by  the  man  whose  name  no 
good  Catholic  ever  mentions  without  some 
pious  expression  of  hope  as  to  the  tem- 
perature of  his  present  surroundings. 

The  rebellion  which  had  been  smoulder- 


102  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

ing  for  seven  years  actually  broke  into 
flame  in  1798. 

To  the  student  of  Irish  Politics  who 
looks  below  the  surface,  there  is  no  episode 
in  the  history  of  the  island  more  in- 
structive, or  that  holds  up  a  more  minatory 
hand  to  the  half-informed,  than  this 
rebellion. 

The  initial  success  of  the  movement  was 
due  in  great  part  to  the  organizing  energies 
and  influence  of  such  Protestant  gentlemen 
as  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald  and  Bagenal 
Harvey.  No  sooner,  however,  was  the 
rebellion  on  the  apparent  high-road  to 
success,  than  the  mask  was  thrown  off,  a 
holy  war  was  proclaimed,  priests  assumed 
the  command  of  the  rebel  army,  and  the 
extermination  of  the  Protestants  became 
the  avowed  aim  of  the  victorious  in- 
surgents. Roman  Catholic  ceremonies 


The  1798  Rebellion  103 

preceded  all  actions.  The  murder  of 
Protestants  was  solemnly  blessed  as  an 
act  pleasing  to  God. 

For  one  whole  month  in  Wexford,  Wick- 
low  and  Kildare  the  rebellion  ran  riot. 
The  insurgent  army  could  boast  30,000 
well-armed  men.  Vinegar  Hill  was  made 
its  Headquarters.  Here,  day  after  day, 
batches  of  unoffending  Protestants  were 
brought  in,  tried  before  a  mock  tribunal, 
and  butchered  in  cold  blood.  The  scenes 
enacted  on  this  hill  recall  the  worst 
episodes  of  the  French  Revolution.  In 
France  the  victims  were  butchered  because 
they  were  aristocrats;  at  Vinegar  Hill 
they  were  butchered  because  they  were 
Protestants,  or,  in  other  words,  foreigners. 
Everything  was  done  to  a  fitting  accom- 
paniment of  prayers,  genuflections,  and 
holy  water.  But  there  were  worse  deeds 


104  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

even  than  the  deeds  done  on  Vinegar  Hill. 
In  Kildare  Mr.  Crafford  and  one  of  his 
young  children  were  impaled  on  pikes 
and  roasted  alive  before  a  slow  fire.  One 
hundred  and  eighty-four  men,  women  and 
children  were  imprisoned  in  a  barn  at 
a  village  known  as  Scullabogue.  When 
news  came  on  June  4th  that  the  fight  at 
Ross  was  going  against  the  rebels,  orders 
were  issued  to  at  once  kill  all  the 
prisoners.  This  was  done  by  setting  fire 
to  the  barn,  and  all  within  it  perished 
miserably.  Two  or  three  of  the  native 
Catholics  who  protested  against  the  horrid 
act  were  themselves  tossed  into  the  flames 
on  the  points  of  pikes.  This  deed  forcibly 
recalls  similar  acts  at  Lisgool,  Kilmore, 
and  Langale  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
earlier.  There  is  a  further  striking  analogy 
between  the  butcheries  on  the  Bann  at 


The  1798  Rebellion  105 

Portadown  in  1641  and  that  at  Wexford 
Bridge  in  1798.  The  latter  showed  a 
distinct  advance  in  brutality.  At  Port- 
adown the  bridge  had  been  broken  down 
in  the  middle  and  the  victims  were  simply 
forced  by  pike-points  into  the  water.  At 
Wexford  Bridge  two  men  in  front  and  two 
behind  thrust  their  pikes  into  the  victim's 
body  and,  lifting  it  up,  held  it  writhing  on 
the  points  till  the  arms  of  the  executioners 
wearied  and  the  body  was  tossed  over  the 
parapet.  Ninety-seven  met  their  death 
in  this  way  on  June  20th.  The  pro- 
ceedings were  then  mercifully  cut  short 
by  a  report  that  Vinegar  Hill  was  being 
attacked,  whereupon  the  butchers  made 
off. 

At  the  end  of  a  month  the  triumphant 
career  of  the  rebels  was  cut  short  by 
General  Lake,  who  collected  an  army  of 


106  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

very  mixed  elements  and  utterly  defeated 
the  rebels  within  a  stone's  throw  of  their 
headquarters.  The  leaders  were  hanged, 
and  Ireland  settled  down  once  more 
to  a  state  of  apparent  tranquillity.  Irish 
Roman  Catholics  and  Anglo-Saxon  Pro- 
testants dug  the  fields  side  by  side,  but 
in  each  there  was  an  inherent  and  in- 
eradicable distrust  of  the  other — a  distrust 
born  of  different  temperament,  different 
race,  different  interests  and  different 
religion,  but — before  all  else,  born  of 
historical  facts.  '98  and  '41  were  not 
forgotten. 


ULSTER  TO-DAY 


above  brief  historical  sketch 
brings  us  to  the  Ulster  of  to-day, 
and  broadly  explains  the  political  attitude 
of  the  two  sections  of  the  population  in 
that  little  understood  Province.  The 
Protestant  attitude  is  often  stigmatized 
as  being  uncompromising.  It  is  un- 
compromising. There  is  probably  no 
community  in  the  world  where  political 
sentiment  is  more  united  and  more  deeply 
rooted.  It  may  also  be  claimed  that 
there  is  no  community  in  the  world  where 
the  political  opinions  held  are  more 
logically  justified  by  anyone  who  takes 
the  trouble  to  investigate  the  facts.  Few 

109 


110  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

people  do.  The  fundamental  idea  at  the 
back  of  the  Ulster-man's  attitude  is  that 
what  has  once  happened  may  well  happen 
again.  It  is  argued  that  when,  through- 
out a  period  of  several  hundred  years, 
certain  occurrences  have  invariably  suc- 
ceeded the  opportunity  for  such  occur- 
rences, it  is  not  unreasonable  to  assume 
that — given  the  same  opportunities — the 
same  occurrences  will  again  make 
appearance. 

When  such  occurrences  invariably  take 
the  form  of  systematic  attempts  to  rid 
the  country  of  the  British  element  by  any 
and  every  means,  it  is  only  natural  that 
those  chiefly  interested  should  be  strongly 
opposed  to  the  introduction  of  any  fresh 
opportunities  for  such  attempts.  It  is  a 
pity  that  English  politicians,  who  think 
to  settle  the  Irish  question  with  smirks 


Ulster  To-day  111 

and  smiles,  do  not  in  the  first  instance 
make  study  of  the  historical  facts  which 
govern  the  situation.  Through  these  they 
might  then  get  not  only  a  truer  sense  of 
values  but  an  illuminating  glimpse  into 
the  soul  of  the  Irish  people.  They  might 
ultimately  arrive  at  the  great  truth  that 
the  soul  of  the  native  Irish  has  not  at 
the  present  day  changed  by  the  width  of 
a  hair  from  what  it  was  in  1641,  and  again 
in  1798.  They  would  then  understand 
why  all  their  smirks  and  smiles  are  thrown 
away;  why  all  conciliatory  measures  fail 
to  conciliate,  or  to  elicit  the  faintest 
spark  of  gratitude.  The  reason  is  that 
they  do  not  so  much  as  touch  the  fringe 
of  the  real  grievance,  which  is  briefly  the 
existence  on  Irish  soil  of  a  million  and  a 
quarter  of  British  colonists.  This  million 
and  a  quarter  are  variously  known  in 


112  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

England  as  the  Irish  Loyalists,  the  Irish 
Unionists,  or  the  Irish  Protestants;  some- 
times as  Ulstermen,  or  even  more  vaguely 
as  "Orangemen."  But  to  the  native 
Irish  mind  they  simply  represent  the  one 
unspeakable  evil,  that  is  to  say,  the  British 
Usurper. 

The  only  attraction  of  Home  Rule  to 
the  inner  soul  of  the  Irish  (especially  in 
Ulster)  is  the  hope  that  it  will  provide 
the  machinery  by  which  the  British 
colonists  can  be  got  rid  of  and  Irish  soil 
revert  once  more  to  the  Irish. 

Even  a  partial  realization  of  this  salient 
fact  must  make  clear  the  utter  fatuity  of 
the  pretty  pictures  which  represent  Carson 
and  Redmond  as  shaking  hands  and 
crying,  "Irishmen  all."  As  well  draw  a 
picture  of  Von  der  Goltz  and  King  Albert 
embracing  in  Brussels  and  crying,  "Bel- 


Ulster  To-day  113 

gians  all."  Residence  is  not  nationality; 
and  when  residence  is  forcible  and  un- 
welcome residence,  it  is  the  very  antithesis 
of  nationality.  It  is  the  accursed  thing 
against  which  nationality  revolts. 

In  the  Northern  Province  of  Ireland 
we  find  two  races  living  side  by  side, 
between  whom  is  little  sympathy,  little 
temperamentally  in  common,  and  between 
whom  there  has  never  been  any  inter- 
mixture of  blood.  These  two  races  are 
— on  the  one  side — the  original  natives, 
on  the  other,  the  British  colonists.  The 
former  are  exclusively  Roman  Catholic, 
the  latter  are  almost  exclusively  Pro- 
testant, but  not  quite.  However,  for 
general  purposes  of  distinction,  it  may 
be  taken  as  an  undeviating  rule  that  the 
Roman  Catholics  are  the  natives,  and 
the  Protestants  the  British  colonists.  The 


114  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

second  half  of  the  rule,  in  any  case,  holds 
good  without  exception.  The  existence  of 
these  doctrinal  divisions  often  leads  the 
half-informed  into  the  error  of  supposing 
that  Ulster  is  the  seat  of  a  bitter  but 
suppressed  religious  strife.  Technically 
speaking,  this  is  not  the  case  at  all.  It 
is  true  the  Protestants  have  little  good 
to  say  of  the  Roman  Catholics  and  vice 
versa,  but  the  mutual  antipathy  is  racial 
and  not  religious,  only — as  has  already 
been  explained — the  religion  marks  the 
race,  so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  religion 
actually  stands  for  nationality.  The  Pro- 
testant, therefore,  looks  askance  at  the 
Catholic,  not  because  of  doctrinal  differ- 
ences, but  because  he  recognizes  in  the 
Catholic  an  inveterate  foe  nursing  a 
deathless  grievance.  Similarly,  the 
Roman  Catholic  scowls  on  the  Pro- 


Ulster  To-day  115 

testants  not  because  of  their  supposed 
prejudice  against  the  triple  mitre  at  the 
Vatican,  but  because  their  Protestantism 
stamps  them  as  usurping  British  colonists 
who  have  wrested  from  them  the  best  of 
their  lands.  This  is  the  Ulster  question 
as  it  stands  to-day  under  the  Imperial 
Government. 

The  Ulster  question  under  a  native 
Irish  Government  would  be  a  very  much 
more  serious  affair.  We  should  then  be 
faced  with  all  the  potential  tragedies 
behind  a  situation  in  which  one  race 
tries,  by  every  known  means,  to  get  rid 
of  another  race  which  does  not  mean 
going.  An  exact  parallel  would  be  fur- 
nished if  the  Red  Indians  outnumbered 
the  Canadians  by  five  to  three,  and  if  the 
Government  of  the  Dominion  were  to  be 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  former.  The 


116  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

parallel,  too,  would  hold  good,  not  only 
politically  but  also  as  to  the  more  practical 
developments  which  would  inevitably 
follow. 

To  benevolent  but  Boeotian  politicians, 
with  a  knowledge  of  Ireland  gleaned  from 
patriotic  fiction,  or  to  the  casual  visitor 
with  a  judicial  sense  warped  by  flattery, 
these  views  may  appear  extravagant.  To 
the  Ulster  Protestant  they  will  seem  such 
threadbare  truths  as  to  be  hardly  worth 
reciting.  To  him  they  are  the  A  B  C  of 
a  creed  which  has  been  handed  down 
from  father  to  son  during  three  hundred 
years  of  residence  in  a  foreign  land,  and  to 
which  the  experience  of  each  successive 
generation  adds  force.  But  the  Pro- 
testant will  seldom,  even  to  his  own 
brother-Protestant,  draw  aside  the  curtain 
of  his  soul,  and  show  to  the  world  the  root 


Ulster  To-day  117 

matter  of  the  whole  question.  That  root- 
matter,  though  it  is  known  to  all,  is  rarely 
bared  to  the  eye — perhaps  because  all 
know  that  behind  it  lurks  an  ominous 
cloud,  the  colour  of  which  is  blood-red. 
It  is,  therefore,  the  thing  which  is  not 
written,  and  not  said  even  in  whisper; 
but  written  here  it  must  be,  for  the 
understanding  of  the  aforesaid  politician 
and  casual  visitor. 

When  the  native  Irish  say,  "Ireland 
for  the  Irish,"  they  mean  what  they  say. 
In  the  South  and  West  the  cry  has  little 
meaning,  for  the  Irish  have  Ireland.  The 
foreign  element  is  a  negligible  quantity, 
but  a  negligible  quantity  which  scatters 
money,  and  is  therefore  not  unwelcome. 
In  Ulster  we  have  a  very  different  state 
of  things.  Here  we  find  half  the  Province 
in  the  occupation  of  settlers  who  are  not 


118  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Irish  at  all.  The  tourist,  the  politician, 
and  many  others  East  of  the  Irish  Sea 
would  call  them  Irish.  They  speak  a 
half-Scotch  lingo  with  an  Irish  brogue; 
their  forbears  have  been  in  Ireland  for 
over  three  hundred  years,  but  for  all 
that,  they  have  not  a  drop  of  Irish  blood 
in  their  veins.  If  they  had,  they  would 
— for  reasons  already  shown — be  Roman 
Catholics.  In  the  eyes  of  the  natives 
they  are  foreigners,  land-grabbers  and 
enemies — in  a  word,  the  "English 
Garrison." 

In  Ulster,  then,  the  cry  of  "Ireland  for 
the  Irish"  is  not  the  mere  innocent 
expression  of  a  laudable  patriotism;  it 
has  a  deeper  and  a  far  more  sinister 
meaning.  It  means  the  expulsion  from 
Ireland  of  the  Protestant  colonists,  and 
is  so  understood  clearly  by  both  sections 


Ulster  To-day  119 

of  the  population.  There  are  no  senti- 
mental illusions  in  Ulster,  whatever 
there  may  be  in  England. 

Among  the  Irish  of  the  South  and  West, 
the  popular  conception  of  Ireland  under 
Home  Rule  may  be  said  to  be,  and,  in 
fact,  is,  nebulous.  The  aspirations  of  the 
peasant,  when  reduced  by  persuasive 
inquiry  to  concrete  form,  will  generally 
be  found  to  stop  short  at  a  kind  of  Pan- 
Celtic  Arcadia,  where  all  will  be  rich  on 
a  minimum  of  work  and  a  maximum  of 
whisky  supplied  by  American  millionaires. 
The  picture — stimulating  though  it  is — 
excites  no  real  enthusiasm.  It  is  believed 
in  much  as  a  favourite  fairy  tale  is  believed 
in  by  a  boy  of  eight.  Get  your  peasant 
alone — well  out  of  earshot  of  his  fellows — 
and  as  likely  as  not  he  will  blast  the 
pretty  picture  (and,  incidentally,  those  who 


120  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

draw  it)    with  a  torrent  of  picturesquely 
obscene  scorn. 

In  Ulster,  however,  a  very  different 
spirit  broods  over  the  land.  Here  Home 
Rule  holds  out  to  the  native  Irish,  not  the 
elusive  mirage  of  the  south,  but  a  coveted 
and  substantial  prize  which  lies  under 
their  very  hand  to  pluck,  and  faces  them 
enticingly  at  every  turn  of  their  daily 
labour.  Half  the  lands  of  Ulster,  and 
these  the  best  and  the  richest,  are  in  the 
hands  of  the  stranger  within  the  gates. 
It  matters  nothing  that  the  lands,  when 
originally  granted,  were  waste,  and  that 
the  industry  of  the  colonists  has  made 
them  rich.  It  matters  nothing  that 
Ulster  was  then  a  sink  of  murder,  misery 
and  vice,  and  that  now  it  is  a  land  of 
smiling  prosperity.  The  natives  know 
none  of  these  things;  they  are  not  politi- 


Ulster  To-day  121 

cally  educated  on  these  lines.  All  they 
know  is  that  the  lands  were  once  theirs, 
and  that  now  they  are  occupied  by 
colonists  of  another  race  and  another 
religion.  And  so  they  cry,  or,  rather, 
they  mutter  under  their  breath,  "Ireland 
for  the  Irish,"  a  cry  which,  under  the 
expanding  influence  of  J.  Kinahan, 
becomes  freely  translated  into  "to  hell 
or  to  the  sea  with  every  bloody 
Protestant." 

There  is  not  a  Roman  Catholic  in 
Ulster  to  whom  the  promise  of  Home 
Rule  does  not  mean  the  promise  of  the 
recovery  of  forfeited  lands.  In  some 
districts  the  lands  of  the  Protestant 
farmers  have  already  been  officially 
allotted  among  the  native  popula- 
tion. 

Out  of  a  consideration  of  such  a  state 


122  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

of    society,     two    prima    facie    questions 
arise : 

(1)  Are  the   aspirations  of  the  native 
Irish   for   a   restitution   of   their   forfeited 
lands  justified? 

(2)  Would    Home  Rule   give  practical 
expression  to  such  aspirations? 

The  first  question  obviously  opens  up 
problems  which  reach  far  beyond  the 
case  of  Ulster.  It  touches,  more  or  less, 
the  whole  civilized  world.  Should  Eng- 
land be  evacuated  in  favour  of  the  Welsh, 
the  relics  of  the  ancient  Britons?  Canada 
in  favour  of  the  Red  Indians?  New 
Zealand  in  favour  of  the  Maoris?  Should 
the  French  clear  out  of  Algiers,  the 
British  out  of  Uganda,  the  Spanish  out 
of  the  Argentine?  We  can  extend  the 
problem  even  further.  Has  any  race  on 
the  globe  a  direct  charter  from  God  to 


Ulster  To-day  123 

be  where  it  now  is?  Where,  for  instance, 
are  the  Firbolgs  of  Ireland,  according  to 
the  Four  Masters  overthrown  and  super- 
seded by  the  Milesians? 

All  will  agree  that  this  first  question 
can  be  summarily  dismissed.  It  does  not 
call  for  serious  attention.  Two  wrongs 
have  never  yet  made  a  right.  Even 
assuming  of  the  purpose  of  argument 
that  the  original  act  of  plantation  was 
an  injustice,  the  dispossession  of  the 
colonists,  after  three  hundred  and  ten 
years  of  exemplary  occupation,  would  be 
an  act  of  tenfold  greater  injustice.  The 
colonists  were  neither  pirates  nor 
marauders.  Their  deportation  was  not 
even  of  their  own  doing.  By  a  State 
measure  they  were — willy-nilly — taken 
from  their  own  surroundings  and  dropped 
down  in  a  strange  land.  In  that  strange 


124  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

land  they  have  an  unbroken  record  of 
industry  and  loyalty.  They  can  and  do 
claim  that  every  good  thing,  civil  or 
military,  that  has  ever  come  out  of  Ire- 
land, has  come  from  the  side  of  the 
colonists.  On  the  reflected  glory  glancing 
off  these  achievements  of  the  British 
colonists  are  built  up  all  Ireland's  claims 
to  honourable  mention  in  history.  While 
in  Irish  home  politics  the  Protestants  are 
branded  as  foreigners,  land-grabbers  and 
interlopers,  or,  in  local  parlance,  as  the 
"English  Garrison,"  on  British  platforms, 
or  in  the  British  Press,  the  deeds  of  the 
same  "English  Garrison"  are  proudly 
pointed  to  by  Nationalist  patriots  as 
home  products.  It  may  truly  be  said 
that  there  is  no  race  in  the  world  which 
confers  its  nationality  with  a  more 
generous  hand  on  all  successful  and  dis- 


Ulster  To-day  125 

tinguished  men.  This,  however,  is  for 
foreign  consumption,  and  is  a  form  of 
advertisement  which  is  perhaps  legiti- 
mate, and  which  is  certainly  successful. 
The  point  is  that,  as  such  successful  and 
distinguished  men — eagerly  claimed  for 
Ireland — are  invariably  of  the  race  im- 
ported from  England  or  Scotland,  it  may 
fairly  be  argued,  even  on  the  Nationalist 
showing,  that  the  colonization  of  part  of 
Ireland  with  men  of  another  race  has 
not  proved  an  unmixed  evil  for  the 
country. 

The  second  question  at  once  raises  more 
practical  issues  than  the  first.  Would 
Home  Rule  result  in  attempts  to  dispossess 
the  Protestant  settlers  of  their  footing 
in  Ireland,  and,  if  so,  how?  The  first 
part  of  the  question  can  be  shortly  dis- 
posed of.  The  attempt  would  be  made; 


126  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

it  has  been  made  on  every  occasion  in  the 
history  of  Ireland  on  which  the  native 
element  has  been  in  the  ascendancy,  and 
it  would  be  made  again.  The  intention, 
moreover,  is  tacitly  admitted  in  the 
native  shibboleth  of  "Ireland  for  the 
Irish;"  it  is  more  than  tacitly  admitted 
in  moments  of  alcoholic  or  electioneering 
excitement. 

The  attempt  would  not  be  made  by 
methods  of  open  violence.  Of  such  de- 
velopments the  Protestants  have  no  fear. 
They  are  of  a  combative  race;  the  natives 
are  essentially  non-combative  in  the 
British  sense,  that  is  to  say,  face-to-face 
fighting  does  not  appeal  to  them. 

However,  there  is  no  question  of  face- 
to-face  fighting.  Every  Protestant  knows 
that  this  is  so,  and  registers  the  knowledge 
without  exultation.  The  attempt  to  rid 


Ulster  To-day  127 

Ireland  of  the  foreign  element  would  be 
made  by  more  characteristic  methods, 
of  which  the  more  conspicuous  would  be 
as  follows: 

(1)  Petty    injustices    and    persecu- 
tions  which   may   be   further   sub- 
divided as  follows: 

(a)  Faking  the  Parliamentary  re- 
presentation ; 

(6)  Establishing  native  officials  in 
every  executive  and  remunera- 
tive post  in  the  country. 

(2)  Agrarian  outrages. 

(3)  Tammany  methods. 

As  the  success  and  impunity  of  (2) 
would  depend  on  (1)  we  will  take  the 
latter  first. 

PARLIAMENTARY    REPRESENTATION 
In   Ulster,   Parliamentary   elections   are 


128  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

not  won,  as  in  England,  by  persuasive 
oratory,  by  house  to  house  canvassing,  or 
by  the  proclamation  through  artistic 
posters  of  the  candidates'  views  on  social 
questions.  Here  no  pictorial  posters 
decorate  derelict  walls  and  gateways,  no 
announcements  of  public  meetings  meet 
the  eye  of  the  wanderer  through  streets 
or  country  roads,  no  fervid  exhortations 
to  the  public  to  vote  for  this  or  that  candi- 
date; no  ribbons,  no  party  colours. 
During  an  election  in  which  it  is  known 
that  the  majority  one  way  or  the  other 
will  be  represented  by  single  figures,  and 
where  the  intensity  of  feeling  is  infinitely 
deeper  than  anything  of  which  England 
has  knowledge,  there  are  no  outward 
signs  in  the  streets  or  market-places  that 
anything  outside  of  the  ordinary  daily 
routine  is  in  progress. 


Ulster  To-day  129 

To  the  eye  experienced  in  local  signs, 
there  is  something  significant  in  the  slightly 
furtive  movements  of  the  good  citizens  as 
they  pass  up  and  down  the  streets.  They 
wear  an  air  of  mild  conspiracy;  at  street 
corners  they  whisper  eager  inquiries  as 
to  the  health  of  certain  electors  whose 
appearance  at  the  poll  is  doubtful,  accom- 
panied by  pious  expressions  of  hope  for  a 
change  for  the  better  (or  for  the  worse,  as 
the  case  may  be)  in  the  health  of  the 
patient  concerned.  Priests  and  members 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary  are  more 
in  evidence  than  is  usual,  but  otherwise 
there  is  no  external  sign  that  an  election 
of  consuming  interest  is  in  full  swing. 
Meetings  are  held,  but  they  are  attended 
more  as  a  sign  of  respect  to  the  candidate 
than  for  educational  purposes.  The  candi- 
date, for  his  part,  dispenses  ancient  but 


130  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

congenial  party  maxims  rather  than  argu- 
ment. Argument  indeed  would  be  thrown 
away,  seeing  that  no  Nationalist  ever 
attends  a  Unionist  meeting,  or  vice  versa. 
Why  should  they? 

Operations,  in  fact,  between  the  day  of 
nomination  and  the  poll  have  little  effect 
on  the  result  of  the  election,  except  in  so 
far  as  the  organization  of  the  party 
machinery  for  getting  voters  to  the  poll 
is  concerned.  The  real  election  is  won  or 
lost  at  a  tedious  and  wordy  function 
known  as  the  Revision  Sessions.  In 
English  politics  this  operation  has  an 
entirely  secondary  importance,  as  political 
views  are  apt  to  change  according  to  the 
humour  of  the  moment,  or  the  mis- 
demeanour of  this  or  that  government,  so 
that  party  zeal  at  the  Revision  Sessions 
may,  in  the  event,  prove  to  have  been  in 


Ulster  To-day  131 

the  interests  of  the  other  side.  In  Ulster 
no  such  danger  exists.  There  is  only  one 
issue — Home  Rule  or  no  Home  Rule — and 
as  to  this,  one  race  votes  one  way  and  the 
other  race  votes  the  other  way,  and  so 
will  to  the  end  of  time. 

The  Revising  Barrister,  specially  selected 
for  the  occasion,  sits  daily  in  the  Court 
House  over  a  period  sometimes  extending 
into  weeks,  during  which  he  decides  as 
to  who  is  to  be  entitled  to  vote  during  the 
next  twelve  months.  In  the  hands  of 
this  functionary  lies  the  fate  of  the  con- 
stituency. From  seven  to  eight  thousand 
names  are  paraded  seriatim  before  him. 
The  right  of  each  name  to  be  on  the  register 
is  contested  with  much  volubility  and  a 
good  deal  of  earnest  but  conflicting  per- 
jury. Dead  men  are  sworn  to  be  alive, 
live  men  are  sworn  to  be  dead.  The 


132  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

national  lack  of  originality  in  nomencla- 
ture adds  to  the  difficulties  of  judicial 
decision.  One  townland  has  been  known 
to  produce  as  many  as  forty  men  with 
the  same  Christian  and  surnames,  these 
being  domestically  distinguished  from  one 
another  by  such  descriptive  terms  as 
"Red,"  "Black,"  "The  Pig,"  "Fire  the 
Thatch,"  etc.  It  will  easily  be  understood 
then,  that,  in  a  country  where  the  imagina- 
tive faculty  flourishes,  the  perplexities 
of  the  honest  Revising  Barrister  are  con- 
siderable, and  he  may  have  to  sit  daily  for 
a  month  before  the  new  register  is  officially 
stamped.  However,  he  is  well  paid  and 
content. 

The  moment  it  is  so  stamped,  the  result 
of  any  election  which  may  take  place 
within  the  next  twelve  months  becomes  an 
ascertained  quantity.  Even  the  majority 


Ulster  To-day  133 

of  the  Unionist  or  the  Nationalist  candi- 
date can  be  calculated  with  a  truly  sur- 
prising accuracy.  A  complete  stranger 
to  the  district  with  a  leaning  towards 
ethnology  could  do  it.  The  Celtic  names 
are  the  Roman  Catholics,  the  British  names 
are  the  Protestants.  The  former  will  vote 
to  a  man  (dead  or  alive)  for  the  Nationalist 
candidate,  the  latter  will  vote  for  the 
Unionist  candidate,  but  not  to  a  man. 
Some  will  abstain  owing  to  personal 
grievances,  and  some — such  as  the  Coven- 
anters— will  abstain  owing  to  religious 
scruples,  the  exact  nature  of  which  no  one 
who  is  not  a  Covenanter  has  ever  been  able 
accurately  to  gauge.  But  the  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter  is  that  the  Revising 
Barrister,  with  a  few  strokes  of  his  pen, 
can  knock  off  a  couple  of  hundred  voters 
from  one  side  and  put  on  a  couple  of 


134  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

hundred  (new  voters)  to  the  other. 
There  would  be  few  seats  in  Ulster  repre- 
sented by  Protestants  under  Home  Rule. 
(2)  A  Home  Rule  Parliament  sitting 
in  Dublin  would  probably  be  remarkable 
(among  other  things)  for  the  appointment 
of  more  highly-paid  and  incompetent 
officials  than  any  other  institution  of  the 
same  size  in  the  world.  But  these  good 
things  which  Ireland  (at  the  cost  of  great 
sacrifice  to  the  country  generally)  will 
provide  for  the  upper  stratum  of  patriots, 
will  not  come  the  way  of  the  Protestants. 
The  Law,  the  Police,  the  Post  Office, 
Land  Valuation,  Inland  Revenue  and 
Excise  will  all  be  in  the  hands  of  the  native 
Irish  party,  and  they  will  push  their 
advantage  to  the  utmost  limits.  Senti- 
mental regard  for  a  fallen  foe  is  not  one 
of  their  weaknesses. 


Ulster  To-day  135 

This  brings  us  to  the  point  of  (1)  seeing 
the  Protestants  defrauded  of  their  proper 
parliamentary  representation  by  a  mani- 
pulation of  the  register,  and,  in  other 
cases,  no  doubt,  by  a  manipulation  of 
the  geographical  boundaries  of  the  con- 
stituency, and  (2)  seeing  them  excluded 
from  all  official  appointments  under  the 
Government  in  favour  of  native  com- 
petitors. These  two  steps  will  be  a 
necessary  preliminary  to  carrying  out  (3) 
with  impunity. 

No.  3,  or,  in  other  words,  the  third 
method  which  will  be  made  use  of  to  make 
Ulster  unendurable  to  the  Protestant 
settlers  will  be  the  time-honoured  method 
of  midnight  prowlings  and  agrarian  out- 
rages. The  prevalence  of  such  outrages 
in  Ireland  has  always  been  in  inverse 
ratio  to  the  power  of  the  law  to  deal  with 


136  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

them.  They  have,  from  the  very  back  of 
history,  been  the  favourite  national 
weapon  for  inflicting  injury  on  obnoxious 
persons,  whom  it  might  be  dangerous  to 
attack  openly.  With  the  entire  machinery 
of  the  law  and  the  police  (as  then  consti- 
tuted) in  sympathy  with  the  "National" 
movement,  it  needs  no  profound  student 
of  Irish  character  to  predict  that  outrages 
would  advance  in  popularity  with  a  leap. 
The  hoisting  of  the  green  flag  would  be  the 
signal  for  a  vigorous  revival  of  the  stock 
programme  of  ham-stringing  of  horses, 
houghing  of  cattle,  burning  of  rickyards, 
and — last  but  not  least — clandestine 
attacks  by  armed  groups  upon  solitary 
men  returning  home  at  night.  Such  have 
been  the  native  methods  from  time 
immemorial.  We  have,  in  rhythmical 
succession  in  the  annals  of  Ireland,  the 


Ulster  To-day  137 

Rapparees,  the  Houghers,  the  White-boys, 
the  Defenders,  the  Molly  Maguires,  the 
Ribbonmen,  the  Moonlighters,  and  the 
Land-Leaguers,  stretching  over  two  and  a 
half  centuries,  but  all  identical  as  to  their 
methods;  and  that  such  methods  will 
— whenever  opportunity  offers — continue 
to  be  identified  with  the  Nationalist 
clamour  for  independence,  or,  in  other 
words,  freedom  from  the  "English  Garri- 
son," no  sane  man  can  doubt.  They 
are  the  fighting  methods  of  the  race,  to 
which  the  fear  of  conviction  and  punish- 
ment have  always  been  the  only  deterrent; 
and  under  Home  Rule  neither  convictions 
nor  punishment  would  follow.  Magis- 
trates, constables,  judge  and  jury  would 
be  on  the  side  of  the  perpetrators.  The 
context  is  familiar.  Blind  policemen,  deaf 
neighbours,  witnesses  with  no  memory, 


138  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

are  they  not  written  in  the  book  of  the 
Chronicles  of  the  Land  of  Erin? 

In  such  cases,  where  law  and  justice 
fail  him,  the  Ulster  Protestant  will  in- 
fallibly take  his  own  measures  for  his 
protection.  He  is  built  that  way.  His 
resolution  and  his  courage  are  unshakable. 
He  has  all  the  unflinching  determination 
of  his  Border  ancestors  and  by  a  question 
of  principle  he  will  stand  to  his  last  gasp. 

There  is,  at  the  moment  of  writing,  no 
such  mutual  protection  organization  in 
Ulster,  except  the  Orange  Society.  This 
society — contrary  to  the  common  belief 
in  England — is  at  present  a  comparatively 
small  organization,  embracing  quite  an 
insignificant  proportion  of  the  total  Pro- 
testant population;  nor  is  it  probable  that 
it  could  ever  form  even  the  nucleus  of  a 
more  comprehensive  movement,  many  of 


Ulster  To-day  139 

the  most  determined  anti-Home-Rulers 
being  out  of  sympathy  with  its  way  of 
expressing  itself.  Recent  activities,  how- 
ever, though  they  produced  no  universal 
protective  league,  have  given  evidence  of 
very  considerable  organizing  power,  and 
of  a  unanimity  of  purpose  which  leaves 
little  doubt  but  that  an  absolutely  united 
front  will  be  turned  to  the  common  danger 
when  it  arises. 


MOONLIGHT  OUTRAGES 


fTlHE  psychology  of  moonlight  out- 
•*•  rages,  and  of  their  invariable  asso- 
ciation, through  the  centuries,  with  all 
Irish  political  movements,  is  worth  a 
moment's  consideration  by  the  student 
of  the  Ulster  question,  because  it  (the 
psychology,  that  is)  is  a  factor  in  the 
situation  of  the  very  first  importance. 

The  amiable  tourist,  or  the  occasional 
visitor  to  Ireland,  with  about  as  true  a 
grasp  of  the  Irish  question  as  he  (or  she) 
has  of  the  Zenda-Vesta,  finds  a  constant 
difficulty  in  associating  the  good-humoured 
Paddies  or  Micks,  who  minister  to  their 
wants,  with  the  inhuman  cruelty  to  man 
and  beast  which  so  often  characterizes 

143 


144  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

agrarian  outrages  in  Ireland.  The  peasant 
appears  such  a  pleasant,  light-hearted 
fellow,  so  appreciative  of  the  visitor's 
personal  appearance,  so  sceptical  as  to 
his,  or  her,  revealed  age,  and  so  fiercely 
denunciatory  of  the  dirty  villains  who 
recently  perpetrated  the  outrage  at  this 
or  that  farm,  that  it  seems  difficult  to 
associate  him  and  his  kind  with  such 
cold-blooded  brutality.  But  that  he  is 
associated  with  it,  and  closely  too,  is 
undeniable.  The  explanation  lies  in  the 
domination  of  the  "bad  man." 

Every  district  in  Ireland  has  its  "bad 
man,"  and  sometimes  its  "bad  men." 
This  is  not  peculiar  to  Ireland,  but  the 
terrorizing  influence  of  the  bad  man  over 
an  entire  district  is  peculiar  to  Ireland. 
If  the  bad  man  has  the  support  of  the 
parish  priest,  the  state  of  that  district 


Moonlight  Outrages  145 

will  be  bad  indeed.  If — as  is  very  often 
the  case — he  is  opposed  by  the  parish 
priest,  but  supported  by  his  curate,  the 
latter  combination  will  win  the  day,  for 
they  will  threaten  while  the  parish  priest 
can  only  persuade,  and  intimidation  is  a 
weapon  to  which  the  Irish  peasant  will 
always  yield.  He  does  not  by  any  means 
love  the  role  of  cut-throat  into  which  he 
is  pressed.  He  is  at  bottom — as  the 
tourist  rightly  judges — a  pleasant  fellow 
enough.  He  has  many  gentlemanly  char- 
acteristics to  which  his  counterpart  in 
England  is  a  stranger;  his  instinct  is  to 
be  courteous  and  even  sycophantic  to  his 
social  superiors.  In  the  absence  of  whisky 
he  is  essentially  non-aggressive,  with  a 
keen  nose  for  danger  and  no  quixotic 
prejudices.  He  has  a  protean  genius  for 
adapting  his  own  views — for  the  moment 


146  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

— to  those  of  his  interviewer,  and,  though 
weak,  he  is  by  no  means  inherently 
wicked;  nor  is  his  apparent  friendliness 
by  any  means  all  a  pose.  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  pose  in  it,  but  at  the  back  of  the 
pose  there  is  a  genuine  desire  to  live  and 
let  live  all  round. 

What  is  it,  then,  that  transforms  this 
pleasant  fellow  into  a  demon  capable  of 
Balkan  atrocities?  Alas!  it  is  the  "bad 
man"  backed  up  by  bad  whisky.  In 
other  countries  the  bad  man  is  a  pariah, 
hunted  out  of  society  and  shunned  by 
the  decent.  In  Ireland  he  is  cock  of  the 
walk.  His  rule  is  wholly  one  of  terror. 
The  peasants  hate  him,  but  they  will  not 
stand  up  to  him;  it  is  not  in  their  nature; 
it  is  easier  and  safer  to  toady  him  and  to 
go  the  way  he  points. 

And  so  it  happens  that  any  devil  with 


Moonlight  Outrages  147 

a  glib  tongue  and  a  gallon  of  potheen  can 
sway  the  proletariat  as  he  wills.  Potheen, 
it  may  be  explained,  is  raw  spirit  distilled 
mainly  from  potatoes.  It  emanates  from 
secret  stills  in  the  mountains,  and  pays  no 
duty,  but  its  effect  on  human  nature  is 
bad — maddening  and  brutalizing — and, 
taken  in  quantities,  it  quickly  transforms 
kindly,  peaceable  men  into  fully-equipped 
fiends.  Then  the  bad  man  preaches  his 
crusade.  This  limb  of  Satan  is  gifted,  like 
all  his  race,  with  the  complete  equipment 
of  the  mob-orator;  he  knows  the  material 
he  has  to  deal  with  from  A  to  Z.  He 
knows  that  his  following  is  weak,  timid, 
and  lamentably  lacking  in  a  thirst  for 
blood.  That  is  where  the  potheen  comes 
in.  It  pays  no  duty,  and  he  can  afford 
to  dispense  it  with  a  free  hand.  And  so, 
in  due  course,  he  leads  forth  his  maddened 


148  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

band  to  their  bloody  work.  He  himself, 
as  the  head  and  brain  of  the  enterprise, 
takes  care  to  drink  no  more  than  will  fill 
him  with  the  military  ardour  necessary 
for  the  enterprise;  but  his  following  are 
primed  up  to  any  devilry. 

In  the  morning  comes  repentance,  as 
it  ever  has  done,  and  ever  will  as  long 
as  the  sun  sets  and  rises  again.  To  some 
come  also  a  sickening  horror  of  deeds 
only  dimly  remembered,  and  a  hatred  of 
the  leaders  who  have  organized  and 
engineered  such  devilries. 

Out  of  these  mixed  feelings  is  evolved 
the  informer.  The  Irish  are  often  stig- 
matized as  a  race  of  informers.  This 
fallacy — for  it  is  strictly  speaking  a  fallacy 
— arises  from  a  misconception  of  the  real 
motives  which  so  often  lead  to  the  giving 
of  information  from  inside.  The  truth  is 


Moonlight  Outrages  149 

that  it  frequently  happens  that  an  asso- 
ciate in  a  conspiracy  becomes  an  informer, 
not  from  motives  of  treachery,  or  greed, 
or  even  fear,  but  because  he  really  loathes 
at  heart  the  business  into  which  he  has 
been  drawn. 

The  curse  of  Ireland  is,  and  always  has 
been,  lack  of  moral  courage.  The  native 
Celt  will  do  anything  rather  than  incur 
the  unpopularity  of  his  fellows,  and  so, 
from  inability  to  say  no,  he  is  dragged 
into  a  conspiracy  which  he  loathes.  His 
ineradicable  desire  to  be  on  good  terms 
with  all  parties  leads  him,  for  a  time,  to 
attempt  the  complicated  manoeuvre  of 
running  with  the  hare  and  hunting  with 
the  hounds,  till  in  the  end  he  finds  the 
double  role  an  impossibility,  forsakes  the 
conspiracy  and  becomes  an  informer.  But 
it  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  that  he 


150  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

becomes  an  informer,  not  out  of  deliberate 
treachery,  but  rather  from  the  promptings 
of  an  over-charged  conscience.  The  first 
cause  of  trouble  is  the  moral  weakness 
which  prevents  him  from  standing  up  to 
the  insinuating  overtures  of  the  bad 
man;  the  second  cause  of  trouble  is  the 
potheen. 

In  all  forecasts  of  the  possibilities  and 
probabilities  which  may  follow  on  the 
administration  of  Home  Rule;  in  all 
analyses  of  the  national  temperament,  and 
of  the  prospects  of  brotherly  harmony 
between  the  two  conflicting  elements 
living  side  by  side  in  Ireland,  potheen  is 
a  factor  to  be  reckoned  with.  It  is  the 
one  certain  intervener  in  the  debate. 

From  the  earliest  days  of  stills  in  Ire- 
land, the  administration  of  potheen  has 
been  an  indispensable  preliminary  to  all 


Moonlight  Outrages  151 

native  excursions  under  arms.  Every 
horrid  act  in  the  long  red  list  of  Irish 
atrocities  has  been  perpetrated  under  the 
spur  of  this  fiery  stimulant.  And  as  long 
as  potheen  is  distilled,  or  as  long  as  cheap 
fusil-oil  whisky  can  be  bought,  the  march 
of  events  in  Ireland  will  be  largely  shaped 
out  of  its  fumes. 


THE  RED  HAND  OF  ULSTER 


rflHE  red  hand  of  Ulster,  as  its  motto 
•*•  makes  clear,  is  a  friendly  and  not 
a  threatening  hand.  Its  sinister  colour, 
founded  on  legend,  was  painted  many 
hundred  years  before  Ulster  was  planted 
with  British  colonists,  and  must  not  be 
taken  as  indicative  of  its  habits  or  designs. 
It  was  adopted  by  Ulstermen  ready- 
painted,  and — red  as  it  is — it  is  the  hand 
of  good  will,  and  never  yet  has  it  been 
raised  by  them  against  a  neighbour, 
except  in  self-defence.  In  order  to  sub- 
stantiate this  statement  by  statistics,  the 
rest  of  Ireland's  Protestants  must  be 
taken  into  partnership.  Then  the  per- 
sistent good  will  of  this  much-hated  colony 

155 


156  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

towards  those  who  so  hate  them  may  be 
partially  understood. 

It  will  be  generally  admitted  that  when 
an  expanding  race  encroaches  upon  the 
lands  of  weaker  nationalities,  and  estab- 
lishes itself  in  their  midst,  there  is  a 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  invaded  races 
to  disappear. 

In  the  vast  territories  of  the  United 
States,  Canada,  Australia  and  New  Zea- 
land the  native  populations  have  almost 
reached  vanishing  point.  We  do  not  look 
too  closely  into  the  cause.  In  Ireland 
the  reverse  has  been  the  case.  In  1650 
the  native  Roman  Catholic  population 
was  reckoned  at  750,000.  To-day  it 
numbers  three  and  a  quarter  millions. 
Although  the  Nationalists  openly  pro- 
claim that  their  ultimate  aim  is  to  regain 
"Ireland  for  the  Irish;"  although  in 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         157 

moments  of  alcoholic  expansion  they  make 
the  same  announcement  in  more  expressive 
terms;  although  on  two  historic  occasions 
they  have  attempted  the  wholesale  exter- 
mination of  the  Protestant  settlers,  there 
has  never  been  any  corresponding  attempt 
on  the  part  of  the  settlers  to  exterminate 
the  natives.  The  bloody  raids  of  the 
soldiery  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  cannot  be  laid  at  the  door  of  the 
settlers;  they  were  essentially  military 
raids,  carried  out  by  paid  soldiers,  of 
whom  many  were  themselves  native 
Roman  Catholic  Irish.  A  settler  is  a 
farmer,  or  a  trader,  and  his  ways  are  for 
peace. 

Again,  agrarian  outrages,  the  foremost 
of  the  stock  weapons  employed  for  regain- 
ing Ireland  for  the  Irish,  have  always 
been  exclusively  associated  with  Nation- 


158  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

alist   or   native   tactics.      The   Protestants 
are  not  built  that  way. 

Let  us  turn  to  another  dark  chapter  in 
Ireland's  history,  which  the  English 
Government  and  the  "English  Garrison" 
in  Ireland — had  they  been  so  evilly  dis- 
posed— might  have  used  as  a  weapon  put 
into  their  hands  by  Providence  with 
which  to  rid  Ireland  of  the  native  ele- 
ment. In  the  great  famine  which  followed 
the  potato  rot  of  1846,  many  thousands 
of  the  Irish  died.  If  it  had  not  been  for 
the  intervention  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment, and  the  British  Protestant  residents 
in  Ireland,  the  mortality  would  have 
been  incomparably  greater.  The  Govern- 
ment voted  £10,000,000.  The  further  con- 
tributions of  the  resident  settlers  can 
never  be  assessed  in  actual  figures,  as  no 
formal  records  were  kept;  but  this  much, 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         159 

at  least,  is  on  record — that  they  gave 
with  an  unstinting  hand,  and  of  their 
best,  in  money,  in  kind  and  in  charitable 
labour,  for  which  they  received  the  usual 
guerdon  of  curses. 

Mr.  W.  Stewart  Trench,  one  of  the 
most  active  workers  throughout  the 
famine,  in  his  famous  book,  "Realities  of 
Irish  Life,"  says:  "Presentment  Sessions 
were  held,  relief  committees  organized, 
and  the  roads  were  tortured  and  cut  up; 
hills  were  lowered  and  hollows  filled,  and 
wages  were  paid  for  half  or  quarter  work 
— but  still  the  people  died.  Soup  kitchens 
and  stirabout  houses  were  resorted  to. 
Free  trade  was  partially  adopted.  Indian 
meal  poured  into  Ireland;  individual 
exertions  and  charity  abounded  to  an 
enormous  extent — but  still  the  people  died. 
Many  of  the  highest  and  noblest  in  the 


160  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

land,  both  men  and  women,  lost  their 
lives  or  contracted  diseases  from  which 
they  never  afterwards  recovered  in  their 
endeavours  to  stay  this  fearful  calamity 
— but  still  the  people  died." 

The  clearances  which  followed  (favourite 
theme  of  the  Nationalist  tub-orator), 
viewed  through  any  other  medium  than 
those  of  green  spectacles,  were  a  plain 
work  of  charity.  The  population  was 
greater  than  the  resources  of  the  country. 
Nature  had  for  the  moment  adjusted  this 
discrepancy  with  her  usual  callous  bru- 
tality, but  the  adjustment  was  only 
temporary.  The  prolificity  of  the  native 
element  was  proverbial  and  was  openly 
encouraged  by  the  priests.  A  recurrence 
of  the  disaster  sooner  or  later  was  in- 
evitable; all  the  circumstances  of  the 
case  were  clamouring  for  it. 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         161 

An  enfeebled,  but  recklessly  fruitful, 
population,  with  no  genius  for  agriculture, 
was,  by  the  irony  of  fate,  densely  packed 
in  a  land  where  no  employment  offered 
but  agriculture.  A  merciful  considera- 
tion of  these  desperate  conditions  led  to 
what  are  locally  known  as  the  "clear- 
ances." In  the  more  congested  districts, 
families  were  financially  assisted  to 
migrate  to  the  newer  world,  where  they 
and  their  descendants  have  since  reaped 
prosperity,  with  wider  elbow-room,  and 
in  more  congenial  urban  pursuits. 

Lord  Lansdowne  alone  made  a  free 
gift  of  £17,000  to  assist  emigration  from 
his  Kerry  estate.  In  England  a  man  who 
opens  his  purse-strings  for  such  a  purpose 
would  be  hailed  as  a  philanthropist.  In 
Ireland  he  is  shot  at  from  behind  walls. 
Here  again  the  bed-rock  grievance  is 


162  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

clerical.  The  "clearance"  crime  lay  in 
helping  to  remove  from  the  country  large 
blocks  of  the  native  Irish,  who  might 
more  profitably  have  been  engaged  in 
paying  dues  to  their  respective  soggarths. 
It  might  be  admitted  that  they  could  not 
have  stayed  where  they  were  under 
existing  conditions,  but  they  could  have 
stayed  had  the  lands  in  occupation  of  the 
foreign  Protestants  been  at  their  disposal. 
Here  we  come  down  once  more  to  the 
one  and  only  root  of  the  Irish  question. 
There  is  method — and  very  systematic 
method — behind  the  apparent  unreason- 
ableness of  Irish  political  agitation. 

Nearly  seventy  years  have  passed  since 
the  Clearances,  and  for  the  benefit  of 
the  third  generation — knowing  nothing  of 
the  real  circumstances — it  is  easy  for  the 
agitator  to  draw  up  a  moving  picture  of 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         163 

injustice.  But  however  bitter  his  words 
may  be  (and  he  is  nothing  if  not  bitter) 
it  is  never  so  much  as  suggested  that  the 
primary  object  of  the  Clearances  was  the 
extermination  of  the  native  population. 
The  venom  of  the  speaker  is  rather 
directed  against  landlords  and  rent-paying 
in  general;  "pheasants  have  taken  the 
place  of  peasants,"  and  so  on.  The 
English  Garrison  qua  Garrison  is  not 
attacked  nor  even  directly  associated  with 
the  Clearance  grievance.  All  this  has 
a  value  as  evidence  of  the  non-aggressive 
character  of  the  militant  Protestants  in 
Ireland.  In  view  of  the  very  wrong  im- 
pression which  has  gained  ground  among 
the  half-informed  in  England,  it  is  im- 
portant that  this  should  be  understood. 
The  policy  of  the  Protestants  towards 
the  natives  is,  and  always  has  been, 


164  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

honestly  pacific.  They  have  no  wish  to 
interfere  with  anyone's  possessions,  re- 
ligion or  liberties.  They  only  want  to 
live  and  let  live.  Their  parades,  their 
drills,  their  "no  surrender"  resolutions 
are  neither  aggressive  nor  even  pro- 
vocative in  intention.  They  are  simply 
precautionary  measures  against  dangers, 
the  reality  of  which  Ulstermen  know, 
and  England  will  not  be  persuaded  of. 


THE   SINN   FEIN  MOVEMENT 

This  organization  was  originally  started 
by  a  few  ecstatic  cranks  whose  aim  was 
the  revival  of  bombastic  native  poetry, 
and  of  ancient  dresses  which  had  never 
existed.  Highland  kilts  and  Highland 
pipes  were  frankly  pirated,  and  ante-dated 
as  native  products.  All  this  was  perfectly 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster          165 

harmless  as  far  as  it  went,  but  it  goes 
without  saying  that  a  society  started  on 
such  lines  would  not  retain  its  original 
character  for  long.  A  fruitful  recruiting 
ground  was  soon  found  among  hooligans, 
corner-boys  and  loafers  generally,  to  whom 
any  form  of  pageantry  and  torn-foolery 
was  preferable  to  work.  Gradually  came 
the  inevitable  playing  at  soldiers,  which 
culminated  in  April,  1916,  in  the  abortive 
attempt  to  seize  Dublin  by  force  of  arms. 
As  an  act  of  militarism  the  attempt  was 
the  most  dismal  of  failures.  A  number  of 
inoffensive  citizens  and  some  wounded 
soldiers  were  shot  by  the  "rebels,"  but  as 
soon  as  bullets  began  to  fly  in  the  opposite 
direction,  the  rebellion  collapsed.  A  few 
— a  very  few — of  the  ringleaders  were  tried 
by  Martial  Law  and  executed,  and  at 
once  entered  the  ranks  of  Irish  Martyrs. 


166  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

This  was  quite  in  keeping  with  recognized 
procedure,  and  illustrates  very  in- 
structively the  absolute  immutability  of 
native  Irish  aspirations,  and  the  distorted 
perspective  which  is  created  by  the  sanctity 
of  those  aspirations. 

In  this  perspective  all  persons  executed 
for  taking  part  in  rebellions  are  ipso  facto 
martyrs.  It  matters  not  in  the  least  what 
barbarities  they  may  or  may  not  have 
committed;  it  matters  not  to  what  extent 
they  may  have  violated  all  recognized 
laws  of  God  and  man.  These  things 
count  for  nothing,  because  they  were  done 
in  the  sacred  cause  of  ridding  Ireland  of 
the  British  resident  element  (i.e.,  the 
Protestants).  Not  only  does  the  end  in 
this  case  justify  the  means;  it  actually 
sanctifies  them. 

Whether  that  end   is   a  legitimate   one 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         167 

or  not  is  a  matter  of  opinion,  but  it  must 
be  remembered  that  to  the  native  mind  it 
is  par  excellence  the  one  sacred  cause  for 
which  they  have  struggled  for  seven  hun- 
dred years,  and  therefore  any  acts  what- 
soever committed  in  furtherance  of  that 
sacred  cause  become  themselves  sacred. 
Thus,  when  we  hear  Napper  Tandy 
pathetically  complaining  after  the  1798 
rebellion  that  "they're  hanging  men  and 
women  for  the  wearing  of  the  green,"  it 
cannot  but  occur  to  the  ordinarily- 
balanced  mind  that  the  hangings  in 
question  were  not  for  the  wearing  of  the 
green,  but  for  a  succession  of  particularly 
brutal  and  cold-blooded  murders.  But 
to  the  native  mind  they  were  not  murders 
at  all,  but  justifiable  and  even  glorious 
acts  of  war,  because  in  furtherance  of 
the  sacred  cause. 


168  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

It  must  be  remembered,  before  wholly 
condemning  such  a  point  of  view  as 
extravagant,  that  the  native  mind  has  for 
centuries  been  trained  to  the  idea  that 
the  art  of  war  lies  in  the  attack  of  the 
defenceless  and  the  avoidance  of  the 
strong.  This  fixed  idea  is  reflected 
throughout  the  history  of  the  country. 
We  search  in  vain  for  Bannockburns  and 
Floddens.  They  are  not  there.  In  their 
place  we  find  Lisgools  and  Scullabogues. 

It  is  not  surprising  then,  that,  where 
such  a  baffling  confusion  of  ideas,  as 
between  murder  and  fighting,  is  traditional, 
there  should  be  a  general  outcry  among 
the  natives  when  the  murder  penalty  is 
exacted  for  that  which,  in  their  perspec- 
tive, amounts  to  no  more  than  an  ordinary 
act  of  war.  They  see  no  ethical  difference 
between  the  killing  of  a  hundred  enemy 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         169 

soldiers  in  battle  and  the  killing  of  a  hun- 
dred enemy  neighbours  in  cold  blood, 
except  that  the  latter  is  the  safer  and 
therefore  the  preferable  course.  It  there- 
fore arouses,  not  simulated,  but  honest 
and  genuine  surprise  and  indignation 
when  those  convicted  of  unprovoked 
murders  are  not  treated  as  honourable 
prisoners  of  war. 

Though  defeated  in  the  field,  the  Sinn 
Fein  organization  gained  strength  instead 
of  losing  it.  Its  exact  aim  in  its  new 
military  character  was  obscure,  but  this 
did  not  affect  its  popularity.  Sinn  Fein 
means  "ourselves  alone,"  and  it  may 
safely  be  said  that  an  aim  so  commendable 
would  receive  the  active  support  of  every- 
one east  of  the  Irish  Sea  were  it  not  for 
the  existence  of  thirteen  hundred  thousand 
solid  objections.  At  present  the  fact  that 


170  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

these  thirteen  hundred  thousand  are  in 
existence  puts  any  such  proposal  out  of 
court,  for  reasons  which  the  foregoing  pages 
have  tried  to  make  clear.  It  is  quite 
possible,  however,  that  the  Sinn  Fein,  in  its 
ultimate  development,  may  alter  all  this, 
and  may,  in  fact,  in  another  generation 
or  two  even  bring  about  the  long-sought 
solution  of  the  Irish  problem. 

The  colossal  possibilities  of  the  move- 
ment towards  an  ultimate  settlement  lie 
in  its  anti-clerical  character.  In  this 
respect  it  constitutes  a  wholly  new  de- 
parture in  the  history  of  Ireland.  The 
rebellion  of  1798,  it  is  true,  started  on  non- 
sectarian  lines,  but  all  parties  concerned 
retained  their  distinctive  religions,  merely 
joining  hands  temporarily  to  defeat  or 
paralyse  the  executive  forces  of  the 
moment.  We  know  now  how  during  the 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         171 

short  period  when  this  object  was  effected, 
the  native  population  of  Wexford  and 
Wicklow  merely  took  advantage  of  the 
paralysis  of  the  law  to  attempt  the  ex- 
termination of  their  Protestant  neighbours. 
The  clerical  element  was  throughout  the 
preponderating  influence. 

The  Sinn  Fein,  on  the  other  hand, 
acknowledges  no  standardized  religion. 
Its  numbers  include  both  native  Celts  and 
British  settlers,  the  former  being,  of  course, 
in  a  very  large  majority;  and  it  is  not  only 
a  non-sectarian  body  but  a  non-religious 
one.  Herein  lie  its  limitless  potentialities. 
It  is  true  the  old  racial  boundaries  are  still 
clearly  defined  by  the  names,  but  in 
another  generation — if  the  Sinn  Fein  move- 
ment continues  to  spread — these  boun- 
daries will  be  far  vaguer,  for  Celt  and 
Anglo-Saxon  will,  for  the  first  time  for 


172  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

three  hundred  years,  intermarry  and  so 
mix  the  races.  The  bar  to  intermarriage 
so  far  has  always  been  that  the  offspring 
must  be  brought  up  Roman  Catholic. 
To  the  trained  Protestant  mind  this  is  a 
contingency  so  detestable  as  to  be  outside 
of  contemplation.  The  Sinn  Feiner,  how- 
ever, has  no  such  prejudices.  His  or  her 
children  will  be  brought  up  free  of  alle- 
giance to  any  fixed  creed.  The  religious 
boundaries  will  disappear,  names  will  no 
longer  be  an  infallible  indication  of  race, 
and  the  bridgeless  chasm  between  the 
native  and  the  colonist  will  be  a  thing  of 
the  past. 

The  building  up  in  this  way  of  a  new 
breed,  cleansed  of  traditional  prejudices, 
and  educated  on  broad  and  liberal  lines, 
cannot  fail  to  revolutionize  political  aspira- 
tions in  Ireland.  The  probability  is  that 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         173 

the  clamour  for  Home  Rule,  being  (outside 
of  predatory  politicians)  based  on  a  foun- 
dation of  ignorance,  will  die  a  natural 
death,  and  that  its  place  will  be  taken  by 
a  vigorous  internal  socialism.  The  swing 
of  the  pendulum,  after  centuries  of  clerical 
bondage,  will  probably  be  to  its  limit,  and 
iconoclasm  of  all  sorts  will  run  riot.  For 
this  reason  the  movement  is  feared  by 
both  priests  and  politicians.  These  see 
their  long-coveted  control  of  the  exchequer 
seriously  threatened,  and  would  gladly 
see  the  movement  and  all  its  supporters 
at  the  bottom  of  the  Atlantic,  but  for 
prudential  reasons  think  it  wisest  to 
simulate  sympathy. 

How  far  this  enforced  pose  will  serve 
then  remains  to  be  seen,  but  it  is  a  matter 
of  little  general  interest.  The  interest 
lies  in  the  possible  transfiguration  of  the 


174  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

Irish  question  by  the  spread  of  Sinn- 
Feinism.  A  cry  will  arise  which  will  be 
a  genuine  national  cry,  not  the  screech  of 
threadbare  party  saws.  On  the  great 
crucial  question  of  Home  Rule  or  no  Home 
Rule,  Ireland  will  become  of  one  mind. 
The  strong  probability  is  that  the  verdict 
will  be  against  Home  Rule.  When  the 
priests  can  no  longer  cherish  their  dream 
of  seeing  the  surface  of  Ireland  peopled 
with  Irish  Roman  Catholics,  who  pay  dues, 
in  place  of  British  Protestants,  who  do 
not,  all  the  driving  force  will  be  out  of  the 
Home  Rule  crusade.  As  in  the  case  of 
many  other  movements  decorated  with  a 
picturesque  veneer,  the  bed-rock  motive 
is  purely  sordid. 

In  the  almost  inconceivable  contingency 
of  the  verdict,  under  such  conditions, 
being  in  favour  of  Home  Rule,  the  British 


The  Red  Hand  of  Ulster         175 

Government  will  be  able,  without  com- 
punction, to  cut  adrift  an  island  which  is 
valueless  as  an  asset,  and  the  considera- 
tion of  whose  affairs  ceaselessly  clogs  the 
wheels  of  Parliament.  This  is  always 
supposing  that  by  the  disappearance  of 
religious  obstacles — consequent  on  an  anti- 
clerical campaign — the  race  distinctions 
which  have  always  divided  Ireland  become 
so  blurred  that  native  is  indistinguish- 
able from  colonist,  and  that  therefore  no 
persecution  of  the  latter  will  be  possible. 
If  Sinn  Feinism  prospers,  such  a  state  of 
things  is  within  reach  of  imagination.  A 
generation  hence  and  Hugh  O'Kane  may 
have  had  an  Anglo-Saxon  mother,  and 
David  Baird  a  Celtic  one — both  impossible 
contingencies  at  the  present  day. 

While,  from  the  pacificist  point  of  view, 
there  is  much  to  be  said  in  favour  of  such 


176  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

a  removal  of  the  religious  distinctions 
which  at  present  advertise  the  racial  origin 
of  every  Ulsterman,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  Province  as  a  whole  would  be  a  gainer. 
The  experience  of  the  other  three  Pro- 
vinces in  the  past  goes  to  show  that  the 
effect  of  mixing  the  two  races  is  not  always 
elevating,  but  rather  the  reverse.  In  any 
case,  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  in  Ulster 
any  such  revolutionary  ideas  will  take  hold 
very  slowly.  The  religious  habit,  whether 
it  be  Protestant  or  whether  it  be  Catholic, 
is  too  firmly  rooted.  A  mixed  breed  may, 
and  probably  will,  arise;  but  its  spread 
will  be  slow,  and  the  true  Ulsterman  will 
relinquish  his  birthright  reluctantly,  and 
only  by  the  pressure  of  very  gradual 
processes. 


CONCLUSION 


WHEN  a  de  novo  inquirer  has 
gained  a  glimpse  into  the  secret 
soul  of  Ulster,  so  carefully  screened  from 
public  gaze  by  both  parties  (though  for 
widely  different  reasons),  he  is  only  nearer 
a  solution  of  the  general  problem  by  this 
much — that  he  can  clear  his  mind  of 
current  fallacies.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, this  clearance — highly  necessary  as 
it  may  be  as  a  preliminary  step  to  con- 
structive experiment — only  leaves  the 
difficulties  greater  than  they  were  before. 
This  is  quickly  realized,  and  with  the 
realization  comes  the  gradual  conviction 
that  legislative  overtures  are  powerless 
to  deal  with  the  situation,  and  that  no 

179 


180  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

lasting  removal  of  existing  conflicts,  or 
of  bitter  party  friction  is  possible,  except 
by  a  mergement  of  the  two  antagonistic 
races  into  one  homogeneous  mass.  The 
root  matter  of  the  antagonism  is  too 
real.  If  it  were  sentimental,  traditional 
or  merely  religious,  as  many  people  in 
England  still  suppose,  a  gradual  incline 
towards  tolerance  from  both  sides  might 
be  hoped  for.  But  as  long  as  our  race, 
clearly  ear-marked  by  its  religion,  occupies 
lands  belonging  by  tradition  to  another 
race,  also  clearly  ear-marked  by  its 
religion,  harmony  is  no  more  possible 
than  it  is  between  the  dog  with  the  bone 
and  the  dog  without  it. 

The  situation  is  sublimely  simple  in  its 
general  outline.  On  the  one  side  we  have 
the  Roman  Catholic  natives,  an  emotional 
and  a  credulous  people,  dispossessed  of 


Conclusion  181 

lands  which  have  since  become  responsive 
and  profitable — a  people  happily  ignorant 
of  the  horrid  circumstances  which  justi- 
fied the  dispossession,  and  wholly  lacking 
in  the  judicial  sense  to  weigh  those  cir- 
cumstances, even  if  known.  As  a  con- 
sequence, they  waste  the  centuries  in 
nursing  an  eternal  grievance  which, 
though  real  in  substance,  is  easily  weighed 
down  by  the  other  side  of  the  Balance 
Sheet,  but  which  from  its  very  nature  is 
capable  of  being  magnified  to  any  extent 
by  a  skilful  distortion  of  facts.  This 
they  get  in  plenty. 

On  the  other  side  we  have  the  Pro- 
testants— British  Colonists  occupying  half 
the  lands  of  Ulster,  but,  in  their  occupa- 
tion, conscious  of  having  done  no  man 
wrong.  The  vexed  question  of  right  and 
wrong  lies  between  the  native  proprietors 


182  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

and  the  English  Government.  It  is  no 
concern  of  the  Ulster  Protestants.  Their 
lands  at  least  have  been  honestly  come 
by,  either  by  direct  dealings  with  the 
English  Government,  or  with  those  hold- 
ing under  the  English  Government.  If 
the  title  of  the  Government  was  faulty, 
then  the  immorality  of  transfer  lies  at  the 
door  of  the  Government,  not  of  the 
unhappy  transferees.  A  man  is  not  re- 
sponsible for  the  back  history  of  every 
Chippendale  chair  he  buys. 

But  in  the  eyes  of  the  natives  the 
Ulster  Protestants  are  the  practical  ex- 
pression of  a  systematic  policy  of  dis- 
possession, and  as  such  they  are  the  very 
abomination  of  desolation  standing  in 
the  holy  place.  Even  if  not  principals, 
they  are  looked  upon  as  agents,  and  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  in  Ireland 


Conclusion  183 

agents  are  shot,  not  because  they  are 
themselves  cruel  or  bad  men,  but  because 
they  are  representative  of  a  system. 

And  so,  in  the  native  privy  councils, 
the  Protestants  are  doomed  to  be  returned 
to  their  own  shores,  or,  at  any  rate, 
eliminated  from  Irish  soil  whenever  the 
opportunity  may  offer.  Of  this  impend- 
ing doom  the  Protestants  are  profoundly 
aware,  but  they  do  not  anticipate  its 
easy  fulfilment.  They  are  a  strong  race, 
brave  and  true,  and  with  a  clean  con- 
science, and  to  the  position  which  they 
have  built  up  for  themselves  in  the 
country  they  will  cling  with  the  last  gasp 
of  their  bodies. 

In  the  conflict  between  these  two  points 
of  view,  it  would  be  easy  for  a  lawyer  to 
argue  hotly  and  convincingly  on  either 
side.  The  main  Irish  case,  however, 


184  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

strong  as  it  can  be  made  on  public  plat- 
forms by  a  careful  selection  of  cir- 
cumstances, seems  hopelessly  prejudiced, 
from  the  strictly  judicial  standpoint,  by 
the  one  initial  fact  that  the  English 
originally  came  over  to  Ireland,  not  as 
invaders,  but  on  the  express  invitation 
of  Dermot  McMurrough,  King  of  Leinster, 
in  order  to  expel  the  Danes,  who  were 
then  over-running  the  land.  Henry  II., 
who  in  the  following  year  (1171)  landed 
at  Waterford,  was  solemnly  received  as 
a  deliverer  and  named  supreme  King  of 
Ireland. 

Roger  Hoveden,  the  historian  of  the 
day,  says: 

"All  the  Archbishops,  Bishops,  Abbots 
of  all  Ireland  came  to  the  King  of  England 
at  Waterford,  and  received  him  for  King 
and  Lord  of  Ireland;  swearing  fealty 


Conclusion  185 

to  him  and  his  heirs,  and  the  power  of 
reigning  over  them  for  ever;  and  then 
they  gave  him  their  instruments — and 
after  the  example  set  them  by  the  clergy, 
the  aforesaid  Kings  and  Princes  of 
Ireland  (namely,  the  Kings  of  Cork, 
Limerick,  Ossory,  Meath,  and  Reginald 
of  Waterford),  who  had  been  summoned 
by  King  Henry's  command  to  appear  in 
his  presence,  and  almost  all  the  nobles  of 
Ireland  (except  the  King  of  Connaught) 
did  in  like  manner  receive  Henry,  King 
of  England,  for  Lord  and  King  of  Ire- 
land, and  they  became  his  men,  and 
swore  fealty  to  him  and  his  heirs  against 
all  men."  Roderick  O'Connor,  King  of 
Connaught,  followed  suit  in  1175,  he  being 
the  last  of  the  native  Princes  to  come  in. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  whole  of  Ireland, 
through  its  Church  and  State  representa- 


186  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

lives,  acknowledging  the  King  of  England 
as  their  King  for  ever,  on  account  of 
military  services  rendered,  by  which  Ire- 
land had  been  saved  from  the  invader. 
In  the  light  of  this  one  starting-point, 
subsequent  rebellions  in  Ireland  do  not 
stand  out  as  noble  struggles  for  liberty 
on  the  part  of  a  conquered  people,  but 
as  treacherous  repudiations  of  a  solemn 
covenant  which  had  been  entered  into 
at  the  instigation  of  the  Irish  themselves. 
It  follows  logically  that  all  confiscations 
of  land  consequent  upon  such  rebellions 
were  not  acts  of  oppression,  but  perfectly 
just  and  proper  penalties  imposed  for 
disloyal  conduct.  If  this  standpoint  can 
be  maintained,  the  entire  "confiscation" 
grievance  falls  to  the  ground. 

In  this  connection  it  is  useful  to  bear 
in   mind    that    the    material    aims    of    the 


Conclusion  187 

native  proletariat,  and  of  the  priests  who 
educate  them,  are  in  widely  different 
directions.  The  priests,  quite  naturally, 
aim  at  seeing  Ireland  entirely  peopled 
by  Catholics  who  would  be  a  source  of 
profit  to  them;  the  proletariat  aims  at 
the  re-occupation  of  forfeited  lands  now 
in  the  hands  of  the  Protestants.  But 
the  latter  aim,  which  is  necessarily  ill- 
defined  in  detail,  and  at  the  best  is  a 
somewhat  far-off  cry,  is  only  kept  alive 
by  constant  hard  work  on  the  part  of 
the  priests,  backed  up  sporadically  but 
not  very  effectively  by  politicians.  The 
anti-Protestant  land  agitation  is  merely 
the  lever  by  which  these  two  associates 
in  patriotism  hope  to  arrive  at  their  own 
ends,  which  are  perfectly  well-defined, 
though  likely  in  the  case  of  success  to  be 
somewhat  conflicting. 


188  The  Soul  of  Ulster 

The  present  barrier  to  the  mergement 
of  the  two  races,  which  alone  can  solve 
the  Ulster  question,  is  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  which  interposes  impassable 
barriers  of  moral  barbed-wire  between 
the  native  population  and  the  Protestant 
colonists. 

It  is  possible  that — for  reasons  already 
given — the  Sinn  Fein  movement  may 
ultimately  remove  that  barrier.  When 
that  takes  place,  hatred  of  England,  with 
all  its  convenient  accessories  in  the  way 
of  conscientious  objection  to  service  in 
time  of  war,  will  die  a  natural  death.  It 
is  a  manufactured  article,  and  the  driving- 
power  of  the  factory  will  give  out. 

THE  END 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILIT 


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